Taliban''s relentless march due to government''s impotence: NWFP official

Islamabad, Apr.23 (ANI): The Pakistan Government appears to have thrown in the towel insofar as attempting to control the surge of the Taliban.

Militants affiliated to the outfit have established effective control over Buner District, which is 70 miles from Islamabad, and a law enforcement official said it is just a matter of time as to when the Taliban will take charge of Pakistan.

"They take over Buner, then they roll into Mardan and that's the end of the game," the New York Times quoted a North-West Frontier Province law enforcement official as saying on condition of anonymity.

Buner, home to about one million people, is a gateway to Mardan, the second largest in North-West Frontier Province, after Peshawar. Local non-governmental organizations have been ordered to leave, and their offices have been looted, they said. Pakistani television news channels showed Taliban fighters triumphantly carrying office equipment out of the offices of the organizations.

"They are everywhere. There is no resistance," the paper quoted a resident of Daggar, Buner's main city, as saying by telephone.

A local politician, Jamsher Khan, said that people were initially determined to resist the Taliban in Buner, but that they were discouraged by the deal the government struck with the Taliban in Swat.

"We felt stronger as long we thought the government was with us, but when the government showed weakness, we too stopped offering resistance to the Taliban," he said by telephone. (ANI)