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Pakistani Jets, Helicopters Strike Taliban

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The New York Times

Published: August 13, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Using jet fighters and helicopter gunships, the government unleashed a more aggressive assault against the Taliban in Pakistan's tribal region this week, risking retaliation from the militants and the wrath of thousands of civilians who have been forced to flee their homes.

The Taliban response was immediate and costly. A minibus carrying 18 Pakistani air force personnel was destroyed by a bomb on a major road in Peshawar on Tuesday morning, killing at least 13 people. The Taliban said the attack was in retaliation for the airstrikes on Monday.

The United States has publicly complained that Pakistan is not doing enough to combat the militants and stop them from crossing the border into Afghanistan.

The area where the government called in the airstrikes, Bajaur, is a militant sanctuary where the nexus between the Taliban and al-Qaida is particularly strong. It also abuts Kunar province in Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have suffered greater casualties in the past two months as they have confronted an increasingly tenacious Taliban insurgency.

Pakistani security officials said the airstrikes broke a siege around Khar, the capital of Bajaur, where emboldened Taliban fighters had been digging trenches in what appears to be an effort to encircle the town and overrun it.

The Taliban had suffered "a lot of casualties," a Pakistani official familiar with the tribal areas said. But the estimates varied widely: as many as 100, according to some reports, and as few as 25, according to others.

In early 2006, a U.S. airstrike at Damadola in Bajaur was aimed at Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's second in command. He survived. But the strike instead killed civilians, resulting in anti-American protests across Pakistan.

The airstrikes by the Pakistani air force in the past few days also had severe repercussions on the ground.

Residents of Khar, and the nearby town of Loe Sam, were forced to flee on foot, and then hitched rides, said Maroof Shah, 40, a farmer from Loe Sam.

"The government knew where the militant hide-outs were," he said. "Why did they have to bomb the houses?"

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