Taliban retreat fails to quell U.S. alarm

April 25, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Taliban militants packed up their grenade launchers Friday and vacated a district they overran outside the country’s capital last week. The move did little, however, to quell the alarm of the U.S. and Western allies.

U.S. officials are concerned that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to forcefully deal with militants slowly expanding into the heart of the country from lawless areas close to the Afghan border.

The retreat from Buner, just 60 miles from Islamabad, came after talks between the militants and authorities, who had threatened to attack them and reconsider the peace agreement in the adjoining Swat Valley region that critics say has given Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants a safe haven.

Witnesses said scores of militants had effectively taken control of Buner since the government formally agreed to the peace deal early this month. Critics said the advance was evidence Islamabad was wrong in talking with the insurgents.

Syed Mohammed Javed, the top government administrator in the region, said a hard-line cleric who helped mediate the peace deal persuaded the Taliban to return to Swat in a meeting Friday.

“No need to worry; they all are on their way back,” Javed told The Associated Press by telephone from Buner. “We told them that we have a deal, we have a peace agreement. Our concern was that no official or private building remained in their control and that nobody was allowed to publicly display weapons.”

The retreat came a day after Taliban fighters opened fire on a few hundred lightly armed paramilitary troops sent to Buner, killing a police officer. Ikram Sehgal, a military analyst, said although attempts to insert the paramilitaries was a “fiasco,” the Taliban likely feared that a full-blown army operation might follow.

The Taliban’s advance into Buner triggered unusually strong condemnation from the United States, where lawmakers are considering a deal that would grant the country $1.5 million in aid each year to battle terrorism.