News stories by Ashfaq Yusufzai, page 22

The rising number of civilian casualties in the military operations against the Taliban in Pakistan’s northern provinces has become an early difficulty for a new government project for the disabled.

By now, Pakistan’s National Games should have been underway, with spectators cheering on the men and women competing in them. Instead, athletes and officials are ruing how militancy and violence have caused the games’ postponement.

Bomb attacks and threats to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have brought development work to a virtual halt in the lawless, volatile environment that is the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), located near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

Amid news of the Pakistani government’s arrest of another Taliban leader and a suicide attack in the volatile Swat district this month, residents here are bent on making the most out of a life that has been returning to as close to normal as possible.

As the frontline province in Pakistan’s war against terrorism, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) has been bearing the brunt of the soaring militancy in the country through massive loss of life and property.

'We aren’t going to be browbeaten by acts of cowardice and would continue exposing Taliban and (other) militants,' said an angry Shamim Shahid, president of the Peshawar Press Club (PPC).

Until the Taliban were forced to flee by the military, the militant group’s deadly opposition to vaccination had been severely hampering efforts to make Pakistan a polio-free country in the foreseeable future.

Tiny Spogmay, a Grade 1 student in one of the biggest schools in the violence-wracked North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is deeply disturbed by the government’s decision to shut down educational institutions all over the country in the wake of renewed terrorist attacks, forcing her to stay home.

'Life under the Taliban was like hell. They destroyed our school and the video shop of my father. Now we are again marching towards peace, but fears of the Taliban persist,' said 11-year-old Ayesha.

Widespread reports of extrajudicial killings of suspected Taliban by the military do not seem to have raised alarm bells among a people that have been deeply traumatized by the militant group's atrocities.