Governor of militancy-plagued Pakistan border province quits

January 5th, 2008 Aimon · No Comments

Source: AFP

ISLAMABAD — A top official in charge of Pakistani tribal areas resigned following a surge in violence linked to Al-Qaeda rebels hiding out in the country’s northwest, an official said.

Retired Lieutenant General Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, governor of North West Frontier Province “cited personal reasons behind his decision and President (Pervez) Musharraf has accepted his resignation,” the government official said.

Musharraf’s close aide Aurakzai was appointed in 2005 with a mandate to improve a deteriorating security situation in tribal areas, a known hub of radical Islamists and Al-Qaeda-inspired militants.

He structured a peace deal with the Pakistani Taliban in September 2006 in the wake of bloody clashes between the army and militants that killed hundreds on both sides.

The deal under which militants agreed to not launch cross-border attacks in Afghanistan and promised to hunt down foreign extremists in return for a slowed down military crackdown, was criticised by Afghanistan and Western allies.

Militants unilaterally scrapped the agreement in July last year after troops occupied a radical mosque in the Pakistan capital Islamabad in a bloody operation which killed more than 100 people, mainly pro-Taliban students.

“The peace agreement was a risk he took,” security analyst retired general Talat Masood said.

“It was good conceptually but it was very weak on the implementation side and it ended up in consolidating and expanding the influence of the militants in the sensitive region,” Masood told AFP.

Hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents took shelter in the rugged region after US-led forces overthrew the hardline Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.