Pashtun protesters hold out for ‘concrete’ assurances“They were forcing people to protest, closing shops and spreading false propaganda against the security agencies,” he added. Wahid Mehmood, head of the police in Swat, says the government has already reduced the number of checkpoints from 97 to 17. If these claims [of abuses] were true, then all of these people would have come out to protest,” he said. Swat, which was briefly taken over by Taliban militants led by Mullah Fazlullah in 2009, was recaptured by security forces after a three-month-long military campaign. Mullah Fazlullah, then head of the TTP Swat, later fled to Afghanistan.

Source: The Express Tribune February 20, 2018 15:32 UTC