Taliban joining hands with local militants in Pak Punjab

Taliban, who are in search of "new havens" amid continuous US drone attacks on their strongholds in Pakistan's tribal belt, are teaming up with local militant groups in the crucial Punjab province to push deeper into the country, a media report said here on Tuesday.

The March 3 terror attack targeting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore is one of the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, 'The New York Times' said quoting Pakistani and US officials, who warned that Taliban's alliance with local militants posed a serious risk to Pakistan's stability.

The report quoted local police officials as cautioning that if the government does not take decisive action, Punjab, which houses more than half of the population of Pakistan, could be the next facing the insurgency.

"I don't think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue," an unnamed senior police official in Punjab was quoted as saying. "If you want to destabilise Pakistan, you have to destabilise Punjab."

As US drone attacks target strongholds of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, the insurgents are striking deeper into Pakistan — both in retaliation and in search of new havens, the report said.

It said the militants have gained strength considerably in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan, which is a gateway both to Taliban-controlled areas and the heart of Punjab.

Some villages are so "deeply infiltrated" by militants that they are already considered "no-go" zones by their neighbours, the paper said.

In at least five towns in southern and western Punjab, including the midsize hub of Multan, barber shops, music stores and internet cafes "offensive to the militants' strict interpretation of Islam" have received threats, it said.

"It's going from bad to worse," a senior police official in Dera Ghazi Khan was quoted as saying. "They are now more active. These are the facts."

Bruce Riedel, who led the Obama administration's recently completed strategy review of Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the Taliban now had "extensive links into Punjab."

The Punjabi militant groups, the paper noted, have had links with the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribesmen, since the 1980s.

It quoted a Pakistani security official as estimating that 5 to 10 per cent of militants in the tribal regions could be Punjabi.

About the Taliban teaming up with the local militants, a senior American counter-terrorism official told the paper that "these are tactical alliances." The Pashtun Taliban and Arab militants, who are part of al-Qaeda, have money, sanctuary, training sites and suicide bombers.

One such joint operation, an American security official said, was the Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad in September last year, which had killed more than 50 people, the paper reported.