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| Civilian casualties may dent support for security forces |
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Sunday, May 10, 2009
By Rahimullah Yusufzai
PESHAWAR: Two incidents involving security forces in Malakand Agency and South Waziristan on Saturday in which a number of civilians lost their lives underscore the need for an extra care by the military, if it wants to keep the public opinion on its side while tackling the militants.
A stray mortar shell hit the house of a villager, Qadar Gul, in the Thana area in the Malakand Agency, which is adjacent to the restive Swat and Dir Lower districts. It killed four people, including his daughter-in-law and grandson, along with one Qayyum, son of Habibur Rehman, and Hazrat Nawab, son of Abdul Malik. Six other civilians were injured by the shell.
The people of Thana blamed security forces for firing the shell and staged a protest at the post of the Malakand Levies in the town. The post was apparently the only government building. Thus, the protest was staged there.
The protesters chanted slogans against the Army for killing innocent people.
Thana is outside the conflict zone, even though it is located perilously close to both Swat and Dir Lower, where military operations are underway at the moment. It is located on the road linking Malakand Agency to Swat and its population has to live in curfew whenever military convoys are moving through the area.
Even then, the people in Thana had no intention of abandoning their homes and living miserable lives in some relief camps or taking refuge with their acquaintances.
But the incident on Saturday in which four Thana residents were killed, gave the people a scare and forced them to start migrating to relatively safer places. The exodus started and would add to the gravity of the situation, caused by the huge influx of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Swat, Buner and Dir Lower.
In South Waziristan, there were reports that five schoolteachers were killed in firing following an attack by the Taliban militants on a military convoy in the Tanai area, located about 20 kilometres from Wana town.
The slain teachers were identified as Baitullah Burki, Javed, Ziauddin, Muhammad Hashim and Saifur Rehman. Though the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) claimed that 18 people were killed in retaliatory firing by the troops after they were attacked by the militants, tribal sources insisted that a number of civilians were among the dead. The sources said the schoolteachers were among the slain civilians. The ISPR conceded the death of one soldier.
It is difficult to get an independent confirmation of the casualty figures due to the remoteness of the area. If the reports about the death of the five teachers and other civilians were true, it is not difficult to imagine the anger which the incident would generate among the aggrieved families.
In the past, there have been reports that the troops start firing whenever they were ambushed or hit by improvised explosives devices (IEDs) by the militants.
The soldiers are human and it is sometimes understandable that they wanted to avenge the attacks on them. But targeting the people who might not be responsible for the attacks and who happened to be present at the site of the assault at the time could quickly turn the people against security forces.
These two incidents took place in different parts of the NWFP. The incident in Thana was a mistake as the shell seems to have strayed and hit a civilian home.
The other one in South Waziristan could be a reprisal for the US drone attack in the area the same day or an attempt by the militants to engage security forces in a different theatre of war to force them to lose their focus while carrying out military action in Swat, Buner and Lower Dir.
But both the incidents risk draining support for security forces, which need public backing, if they are to defeat the militants.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
