Pakistani Taliban shave heads of three "thieves"

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 22 (Reuters) Pro-Taliban militants shaved the heads and beards of three suspected car thieves today and paraded them through a town in a lawless tribal region seen as a hotbed of Islamist militancy.

Gun-totting militants riding in six vehicles took the suspects around the market of Mir Ali, a town in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, as residents looked on, witnesses said.

''They were taken round the bazaar three times,'' one resident said.

The incident is likely to fan fears of the ''Talibanisation'' of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, which has never come under the full control of any government.

The three men were detained on Wednesday night after snatching a car in the nearby town of Bannu, residents said. After parading them, the militants took them away. Their fate was not known.

Many Taliban and al Qaeda militants took refuge in the area after US-led forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, and were given shelter by the deeply religious Pashtun tribes.

Pakistani forces tried to clear out foreign militants and subdue their Pakistani allies as part to its efforts against militancy since 2001 and hundreds of people were killed.

But last year, the government signed a peace deal aimed at ending the fighting and stopping cross-border raids into Afghanistan.

Critics say the deal, which also stipulated that no ''parallel government'' could be set up, has given the militants free rein and led to the ''Talibanisation'' of a region that has become a haven for al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The government of President Pervez Musharraf, a major ally in the US-led war on terrorism, defends the deal and rejects the notion of Talibanisation.

REUTERS BDP PM1747