Pakistan Taliban chief in Swat surrounded - minister

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The senior Taliban leader in northwestern Pakistan's Swat Valley has been surrounded and will be captured, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Sunday, adding the back of the Taliban insurgency had been broken.

Pakistani Taliban advances and attacks early this year raised fears for nuclear-armed Pakistan's stability but the Islamist militants have suffered a series of setbacks in recent weeks including the killing of their overall leader.

Security forces launched an offensive in the Swat valley, about 120 km (80 miles) northwest of Islamabad, in late April and killed more than 2,000 fighters, according to the army. There has been no independent verification of that casualty estimate.

The group's leader in the former tourist valley, a self-styled cleric called Fazlullah, and most of his commanders have evaded security forces, leading to fears they could regroup.

But Malik said Fazlullah's days on the run would soon be over. "Fazlullah has been surrounded. He can't run away," Malik told reporters after meeting leaders of ethnic Pashtun tribes from the northwest. "Fazlullah is now irrelevant, he's a vegetable. I think he'll be captured."

The Pakistani Taliban under the command of Baitullah Mehsud were held responsible for a wave of attacks across the country from 2007, including the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December that year.

The violence contributed to a slide in investor confidence, exacerbating an economic crisis that forced Pakistan to agree to a $7.6 billion International Monetary Fund bail-out in November.

Mehsud was killed in a missile attack by a U.S. drone aircraft in his South Waziristan stronghold on the Afghan border in early August.

"RUNNING AWAY"

U.S. and Pakistani officials said Mehsud's death left the militants in disarray and riven by rivalry. Analysts say it is too early to say if their setbacks are a permanent blow or if they might regroup and strike back.

Malik said intermittent attacks could be expected but the militants were on the run.

"The back of anti-state and anti-Islam elements has been broken. Today they're seen running away," he said.

Asked when Fazlullah would be captured, Malik said the security forces would determine that.

Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said efforts were being made to capture Fazlullah but he dismissed media reports of his imminent capture as speculation.

"Efforts are there but stories in the media are all speculative," Abbas said. The army said in July that Fazlullah was believed to have been wounded in fighting.

The Pakistani militants are allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan, where violence is at its most intense since the overthrow of their government in 2001, despite the arrival this year of thousands more U.S. troops.

Pakistani action against militants in lawless border lands where Afghan Taliban have bases is seen as vital to U.S. efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan. But the Pakistani army has yet to go after the factions that attack into Afghanistan.

The army said on Friday one of Fazlullah's top aides, the Taliban spokesman in Swat, and four other leaders had been captured near the valley's main town of Mingora.

Malik said the spokesman, Muslim Khan, was providing his interrogators with much information. "Muslim Khan is singing and telling everything about his friends," Malik said. Link...