Civilians suffer in Pakistani war on Taliban

updated 4:06 p.m. ET May 27, 2009

MARDAN, Pakistan - Moabullah recalled dragging the dead in his wheelbarrow for burial behind a girl's school. There were about 30 bodies, he said, many blown apart in fighting between the Pakistan army and Taliban militants in the Swat Valley.

As Pakistan fights to take back the valley and other parts of the northwest, residents fleeing the fighting are pouring into hospitals and refugee camps. Many, like Moabullah, are telling their stories to anyone who will listen.

Taken together, their accounts — along with those of aid workers and hospital staff — suggest significant civilian casualties, mostly as a result of aerial raids by an army more equipped for conventional war with India than guerrilla warfare with the Taliban.

The Associated Press conducted more than 150 interviews in refugee camps from Mardan to Swabi, at hospitals and basic health units as well as into the battle zone in Buner to seek a picture of the plight of civilians amid the combat.

No independent tallies of the dead have been conducted. Aid groups like the international Red Cross and U.S.-based Human Rights Watch say such a task is impossible until they are able to enter most parts of the area of fighting — about 4,000 square miles, or nearly the size of Connecticut.

But the very perception among villagers of the causes of widespread killings, injuries and damage to homes could undermine popular support needed for the U.S.-backed Pakistan army campaign and possibly generate sympathy for the insurgency.

"Civilian casualties are much higher than those of either the army or the Taliban," said Ali Bakt, speaking at a hospital in the northwestern capital of Peshawar after fleeing the Taliban mountain stronghold of Peochar. He said both sides were firing mortar shells — an inaccurate weapon that often hits targets other than the intended one.

Causalities take toll
Yusuf, a 21-year-old man who fled the fighting in Buner, said he supported the military operation but was fed up with the civilian casualties.

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"It's good to take action against the Taliban, but there is a problem for civilians," said Yusuf, who like many in the Pakistani frontier region offered only one name. He recalled the killings of 10 people whose bodies could not be recovered for three days because of the fighting.

The army is not releasing tolls of civilian casualties, but insists they are minimal and that it is doing everything possible to avoid causing them.

"In our judgment there are very few casualties," military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas said, emphasizing the main targets are militant training camps and their mountain hide-outs. "But even if we are fighting in a populated area, we are using precision strikes."

At a government-run hospital in the town of Mardan just south of the Swat Valley, Moabullah gave his account of the carnage.

"I myself put the bodies in the wheelbarrow and took them to a graveyard behind a girls' school," Moabullah said as he held the hand of his dehydrated 9-year-old son, Abu Bakr, who was lying in a foul-smelling bed.

Deadly crossfire
Intravenous drips from makeshift poles were nourishing the thin boy and, in the next bed, an elderly man who appeared to be malnourished and barely breathing.

The old man's nephew, Nawab Ali, said they fled their homes in the Swat Valley's main city of Mingora on May 22, defying an army-imposed curfew. They had run out of food, and water supplies were low.

"People were coming on foot. We had just reached near the village of Abwa when the army fired on us. Six people were killed and seven others hurt. I saw this myself," Ali said. "The army was trying to hit the Taliban but hit civilians trying to flee instead."

Four women were killed including the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whose grandfather carried him to safety, according to Ali.

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