Islamists Battling Pakistani Forces in NWFP

Pakistani forces are engaged in heavy fighting with one of the Islamists at their compound - a religious seminary.

Pakistani security forces exchanged heavy gunfire with militants at the sprawling seminary of an increasingly powerful extremist cleric in the troubled North-West Frontier Province today, according to regional police officials.

The fighting was in the same region where a bomb attack on Thursday killed 17 members of a civil armed guard and 3 civilians.

The cleric, Maulana Fazlullah, is also known as Maulana Radio for his illegal radio broadcasts urging Taliban-style Islamic law. The provincial government deployed 2,500 troops to the area, known as Swat, two days ago, to join army forces trying to quell the rise of extremism the cleric has fostered. He is believed to have gone underground since the troops arrived.

Swat, once a peaceful tourist area, has been transformed in the past few months by a series of deadly bombings that have been aimed at civilians. The cleric is believed to have 4,500 armed followers.

Yeah, real peaceful. That understates longstanding issues in the region and tribal warfare that has gone on for generations.

And the situation might be worse than that - as an unidentified number of Pakistani troops have already been killed in the fighting.

Bill Roggio sheds more light on that latter report, noting that at least 30 Pakistani troops were killed, and many more injured.

Police officer Amjad Khan told the Associated Press the blast hit a platoon of 43 Frontier Constabulary troops in a truck near the police district headquarters,” CNN reported. AFP stated the likely cause of the explosion was a suicide bomber. The Pakistani Interior Ministry appears to be willing to chalk the explosion up as a munitions accident.

The fighting in this region is going to be bloody and difficult, especially as winter approaches.

Fazullah is a pro-Taliban thug who sent thousands of his minions to Afghanistan to do battle alongside the Taliban and al Qaeda against the Americans in 2001. They've been able to avoid the consequences of their actions for far too long, and their redoubt must be eliminated, which continues to offer safe haven for terrorists and threatens the stability across the Afghan/Pakistani border.