ISLAMABAD – As the Pakistan International Airlines flight touched down here, I noticed that the in-flight screen featured the lush landscape of the Swat Valley with a promotional message: “Pakistan, heaven on earth.”
Not exactly.
And definitely not these days with a spate of suicide bombings, one of which exploded outside a mosque where worshipers were lining up before the Friday prayer service in the northwest of the country.
Photographer: Asim Hafeez / June 6 2009.
The blast reportedly took 29 lives and came amid an all-out military offensive by Pakistan aimed at confronting a rising Taliban insurgency concentrated in the Swat Valley.
It’s my first time back in Pakistan in more than two years, and the situation has deteriorated rapidly in that time. On this trip, I will be revisiting many of the places and people I have reported on before as a way to assess where the situation stands. I am here on a partnership with GlobalPost and the BBC/PRI program The World, which is produced at WGBH in Boston.
My reporting will focus on the Taliban, which I first started covering in 1995. Although there was no claim of responsibility as yet in the bombing that took place at about 1:30 PM local time, all eyes are on the Taliban which analysts say is desperate to respond to the military’s purported successes in pushing back the Taliban insurgency that has been raging in the Swat Valley for months.
Pakistani television reports broadcast the aftermath of the bombing and reporters on the scene quoted military officials who put the death toll at 29 with at least 40 wounded.
The violence came just one day after the country’s leaders urged President Barack Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, who is visiting the region, to provide more aid to stave off Taliban-led militancy in the northwest of the country.
The Pakistani military has dramatically stepped up its fight against the Taliban in the last month. One of Pakistan’s leading English language newspapers, Dawn, carried a front-page headline today proclaiming, “Tide has Turned Against Terrorists.”
Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said, “The tide in Swat has decisively turned and major population centers and roads leading to the valley have been largely cleared of organized resistance by the Taliban.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast at the Sunni Muslim mosque in the Haya Gai area of Upper Dir, a rugged and lawless province that straddles the Swat Valley.
Photogrpher: Asim Hafeez / June 6 2009
GroundTruth is written by Charles Sennott, the Executive Editor and co-founder of GlobalPost. The blog is a way for GlobalPost to let you know what our correspondents all over the world are covering every day. It is a place where Sennott highlights the best work in the field by a stellar team of correspondents . 