Taliban extends cease-fire in Pakistan's Swat Valley

The Associated Press reports that while the Taliban in Swat are widely seen to have the upper hand over the central government, in Bajur they have narrowly escaped defeat several times.

The military says it has killed many Taliban fighters there in the past several months and feels no pressure to cede to the militants' demands, says the report.

A government administrator in tribally ruled Bajur said authorities were aware of [Taliban commander Faqir] Mohammad's announcement.

"We do welcome it. If they will not fire bullets, we will also consider taking a lenient view toward them," Faramosh Khan told The Associated Press.

The military began its offensive against militants in Bajur in September last year and claims to have killed around 1,500 Taliban fighters. The United States has praised the offensive and said it has stemmed the flow of fighters in Afghanistan….

In an interview over the weekend, military spokesman ... Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said there were no plans to replicate the Swat approach in Bajur or a neighboring region where the military is also undertaking an offensive. He claimed both operations were succeeding in rooting out al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera reports that the Bajur region is strategically important because it is a major transit route for militants traveling to fight US and NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Pakistani political analyst Tayyab Siddiqui says the extended cease-fire deal has been met with "optimism and hope" in Pakistan.

But not everyone shares that view. The Christian Science Monitor reports that many in Pakistan were wary of the original cease-fire deal, with some seeing it as too fragile to last and others fearing the Taliban would use it as a cover to rearm their forces.

Some analysts, however, remain skeptical of a lasting peace. "This is a deal that both sides have negotiated in bad faith," says Riffat Hussain, a military analyst at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, predicting that the government and Taliban will simply use the cease-fire to entrench their positions.

The Taliban's long-term aims, he says, may be to "carve out Swat as a political enclave for their influence and rule. They will then have a sanctuary for the more extreme forces of Baitullah Mehsud to further destabilize both FATA [Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas] and Afghanistan," he says, referring to the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan.

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