Source: Chicago Tribune (Kim Barker)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The bomb was crude and small, placed outside the metal door at 4 a.m., not a time when anyone would be inside renting movies. But the explosion last week sent a powerful message to Aziz ul Haq, who runs the store. In a few days, he will close his doors, just like at least 40 other movie shops in the area over the past two months.

Several neighbors welcomed his decision. They said ul Haq spoiled the morals of young people with what they called pornographic movies—actually PG fare from India and the U.S. that included “Mask” and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.”

“If we don’t close, someone will force us,” said ul Haq, 21, who runs the shop with his brother but who says the movie-rental business is doomed. “It is an Islamic country.”

Extremist attacks have always been a threat in and around Peshawar, the conservative capital of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province, which borders Afghanistan and the remote, lawless tribal areas that are a haven to Islamic militants. But an unprecedented string of small bombings here has had big repercussions.

The attacks illustrate how the influence of Islamic radicals has been quietly creeping into more of Pakistan at a time when President Pervez Musharraf, his political opponents and the West have been distracted by a power struggle in the capital. And many worry that the militants have gained a momentum that cannot be stopped simply, even if Musharraf now turns his full attention back to the problem.

When Musharraf declared emergency rule in Pakistan Nov. 3, he said he wanted to control the rising threat from militants and a hostile judiciary. But while thousands of opposition activists were detained in the major cities, army and police officials say, the emergency has done little to improve or even change their ability to do their jobs.

“What we see at work in the border, particularly on this side of the border, are breeding-ground conditions that are ideal for militants and for people who have grievances,” said a Western diplomat in Pakistan speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue. He added that changing those conditions will not be easy. “It is a huge task and very difficult.”

In Peshawar, the police have solved few of the bombings, which have managed to almost shut down the struggling entertainment industry here. No one was arrested in one of the most serious attacks, a suicide bomber who killed the city’s police chief and 15 others last January, let alone the smaller bombs that explode regularly. No one has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks.

In Peshawar, as many as 3,000 police patrol the city of 4 million. That means a rate of one officer for every 1,333 people, compared with Chicago, with one officer for about every 210 people. But the Peshawar police are expected to solve normal crimes plus tackle a growing Islamic insurgency, which often traces back to Taliban-controlled towns or the nearby tribal areas, where tribal justice reigns and there is no law enforcement, let alone police. Coordination between police departments here is unlikely or impossible.

“The militancy factor in the last one year, wasn’t here before,” said Muhammad Tahir, the senior superintendent of police in Peshawar. “Basically the erosion of state authority has taken place.”

As Tahir explained that the militants were better equipped than police in parts of the province, his phone rang — another bombing. This time, a bomb being carried by a woman had blown up near an office of Pakistan’s most powerful spy agency. Government officials initially said the woman was the country’s first female suicide bomber, but Tahir later said she was probably carrying the bomb when it was unexpectedly detonated by mobile phone, killing only her.

In the past few months, the Pakistani army has also faced the spread of militants to new areas, such as Swat, a one-time tourist mecca described as the Switzerland of Pakistan about 100 miles from Islamabad.

Militants linked to the Taliban and an anti-government cleric known as Mullah Fazlullah set up checkposts, reportedly beheaded men dubbed as government spies and drove out local officials. In villages in the Swat valley, militants burned records at police stations and hung signs outside proclaiming “Taliban station.” They closed down girls’ schools.

The Pakistani army launched an offensive against militants in Swat and on Saturday said that militants were almost finished. Maj. Gen. Nasser Janjua, commander of the operation, told journalists that the militants had controlled 25 percent of the valley and now control only 2 percent, although that could not be verified.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber killed four civilians and two police officers when he rammed his car into a police outpost in the area.

When militants are driven from one place, they often pop up somewhere else. Darra Adam Khel, a weapons-manufacturing town once easy to visit, has recently turned into a Taliban village with checkposts, local journalists say. One added that the Taliban have gained public support for confronting drug trafficking and other crime.

Some analysts believe what has happened in the province could be the natural legacy of a provincial government run by Islamist hard-liners. When a coalition of six Islamist parties won election in 2002 — the first time religious parties won a majority of provincial seats in Pakistan’s 60-year history — the government’s first actions were to ban concerts and music in public buses and to rip down billboards with women’s pictures. The government-run Nishtar Hall, built for concerts and other performances in Peshawar, was shuttered.

Ban women on billboards in a place like the North-West Frontier and open the door for attacks on girls’ schools, said Shah Jehan, a professor at Peshawar University who teaches government administration. Ban concerts and music in public and pave the way for the bombing of music and movie shops, he said.

Jehan said the reason for attacking entertainers was obvious. “These musicians, they are the rivals of the mullah,” or Islamic cleric, he said. “Why are they rivals? Because these musicians are stealing the audience of the mullah.”

In Peshawar now, some people are afraid to visit music and movie shops or even barber shops, as shaving off beards is also considered un-Islamic by extremists. At one Western bank branch, employees began wearing traditional Pakistani clothes instead of the Western suits they once wore. Women who once did not cover their hair are now wearing head scarves or even all-covering burqas.

“I insisted that my friends come with me,” said Mohammad Younis Siddiqui, 24, a college student shopping in a mini-mall filled with music and movie stores. “They said, ‘We would go to hell with you but we won’t go there.’”

On Oct. 2, a bomb hidden in a plastic thermos exploded at the mini-mall, killing small-time movie producer Shabir Ahmed as he walked out of a friend’s shop and damaging 30 stores. Ahmed had just been showing his friend the trailer to his new movie on a DVD player.

Ejaz Nayak, 24, a cameraman and director who knew Ahmed, said he has not worked in the past month. He is looking for jobs in Islamabad as the film industry in Peshawar is dying.

“No one was objecting to it before,” Nayak said. “But since the Taliban came, everyone is criticizing us.”

Mohammad Fayaz, who helps run the Capital Cinema, said he had lost almost $57,000 in the past year. “Before 100 people would come, but now 10 people come,” said Fayaz, also a movie director and medical doctor. “I’m spending money but I’m getting nothing.”

Music and dancing have long been a tradition with the region’s ethnic Pashtuns, even if women and men never publicly danced together because of religious and cultural restrictions. Pashtun movies, even bawdy ones, have found healthy audiences.

But at ul Haq’s video store, the attitudes of neighbors show just what kind of bullying the entertainment industry now faces. The three shops on the block have closed in the past four months — one after a stick of dynamite was tossed inside and another because the owner feared for his life.

Bakht Munir, a nearby fruit seller, said ul Haq and the other movie store owners peddled pornography.

“I support the bombings,” Munir said. “They’re ending vulgarity.”

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Tags: , Army, Killings, Militants, Musharraf, Suicide Bomber, Taliban