Taliban spreading across Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Islamic militants known as the Pakistani Taliban have extended their reach across all seven of Pakistan's frontier tribal regions and have infiltrated Peshawar, the provincial capital, heightening U.S. concerns that an insurrection may be broadening in the nuclear-armed nation.

Fighting over the weekend spilled into previously peaceful parts of the tribal belt that borders Afghanistan and intensified in South Waziristan, Bajour and Mohmand. In Bannu, southwest of Peshawar, gunmen fleeing police took dozens of schoolchildren hostage for several hours Monday before tribal elders brokered a deal offering them safe passage, state-run television reported.

"It's worsening day by day," said Safraz Khan, a political scientist at the University of Peshawar. "People feel vulnerable. People feel scared."

A disparate group of tribal armed militant groups, some of them linked to al-Qaida, announced the formation of an alliance last month called the Taliban Movement of Pakistan. The 40-man leadership is from seven tribal agencies and eight bordering districts, underscoring the movement's reach. The group is thought to have 5,000 to 10,000 fighters and is growing.

U.S. officials are deeply concerned that the insurgency is becoming bolder and expanding faster than had been anticipated, a State Department official said.

"The feeling is that we are not dealing with a terrorist group here, but an insurrectionist movement," said the official. "That's an elevation without question from what we've been dealing with."

He noted the broad scale of fighting across the tribal agencies, which together form the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and in settled parts to the east.

"These are not groups of Pashtun brigands popping potshots at army patrols," he said. "This looks like there is clearly coordination going on."

Some U.S. officials say al-Qaida is providing the coordination, but others say it's too early to reach that conclusion, he said.

Traffic finally returned to normal Monday along the key Indus Highway, which connects Peshawar to the port of Karachi, after soldiers backed by helicopter gunships regained control of a 1.2-mile-long tunnel that militants had captured late last week.

Skirmishes around the Kohat Tunnel and in Darra Adamkhel, 25 miles south of Peshawar, heightened the sense that Peshawar, the garrison city of 2 million residents, faces peril from the spreading violence.

The increased fighting also has U.S. officials worried about possible threats to supply lines to U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, which stretch from Karachi through the tribal territories, the State Department official said.

The official also said there were indications of a flow into Pakistan of fighters from Afghanistan who apparently sensed there was "an opportunity to achieve a significant victory."

Mahmood Shah, a retired brigadier general based in Peshawar, said government forces had been "sleeping" as the militants strengthened, gaining new adherents.

"As they become more successful, many criminals also join them," Shah said. "They grow beards and they become 'pure.' "

Although rockets occasionally rain down on Peshawar — there were 11 on Jan. 6 and another Saturday — some analysts don't think the city will come under direct siege.

Rahimullah Yusufzai, editor of the Peshawar bureau of The News, said the Taliban actions over a broader area were intended to take heat off mountainous South Waziristan, where soldiers have used helicopter-borne aerial bombardments and long-range artillery.