Taliban has successfully returned to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Swat Valley: Report

Islamabad [Pakistan], May 8 (ANI): The Taliban has successfully returned to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Swat Valley. The Taliban in Afghanistan and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are not planning on granting a moment’s respite, The Pakistan Military Monitor reported.

The Swat Valley is covered in clouds of fear and uncertainty, following the recent bombings in Swat that killed police officers and civilians. People are worried that the oppressors may take over the Valley and establish their camps.

They fear that the Switzerland of Pakistan will resemble an unforgiving desert, dreary and despondent. Remembering the atrocities that Mullah Fazlullah and his Taliban commanders committed about 15 years back, it is not surprising that one’s mind may be plagued with such thoughts, according to The Pakistan Military Monitor.

The locals called the area between Mingora City and Green Square the “Bloody Intersection”, because the Taliban used to hang the heads of their enemies here. The Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai was once the victim of their brutalities. Explosions at girls’ schools were common.

A total of 640 schools were destroyed in Swat and nearby districts. The Taliban used radio broadcasts to issue edicts against girls’ education, playing music, and performing any kind of art such as dancing, considering them blasphemous.

According to The Pakistan Military Monitor, a decade back, hundreds of thousands of Swat residents were displaced, unsupported by the government. Regardless of their wealth, age, or gender, everyone had to abandon their homes. People in Swabi, Mardan, Charsadda, and the surrounding areas of Peshawar opened their doors to them.

With target killings, calls for extortion, bomb blasts, infrastructure destruction, kidnappings, and blackmailing, the air in Swat is filled with fear. Members of the peace community are being witch-hunted.

The TTP has since October 2022 been openly challenging the federal government by attacking high-security sites and law-enforcement agencies. Police stations across the nation have been blown-up like dominoes, one after another.

Two Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) officers and several Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) officers were killed in January this year, The Pakistan Military Monitor reported.