Black flags with a sword emblazoned across them were flying above many of the mud-walled homes in the Pakistani town of Bara on Sunday in a show of support for a militant who government forces are out to get. The flags were those of the Lashkar-i-Islami, or Army of Islam in northwest Pakistan's Khyber region, a wedge of tan-colored mountains speckled with small trees sandwiched between the city of Peshawar and the Afghan border. Security forces launched an offensive on Saturday to push members of the militant group, led by a commander called Mangal Bagh, from the approaches of Peshawar after Bagh's men began making forages into the city to impose their Taleban-style ways. Though he and his men are feared by many in Peshawar, in Bara town, a Bagh stronghold about 15 km (10 miles) southwest of Peshawar, the thin commander with a bushy bread is well regarded. “He's nice man. He's being painted as a bad man because he talks about Islam,” said resident Fazal-e-Mehboob standing by the debris of Bagh's house that security forces blew up on Saturday. Khyber is one of seven ethnic Pashtun-majority regions in northwest Pakistan which have never come under the full control of any government. In the 19th century, British colonial troops battled Pashtun warriors up and down the Khyber Pass for years. The British later saw the independent-minded Pashtuns as a convenient buffer, fending off Russian advances towards the northwest frontier of British India. A former bus driver with little education, Bagh, who is in his mid-40s, appears to have won support the same way the Afghan Taleban did when they emerged in the early 1990s and sorted out war lords and criminals preying on the people. “He brought peace and got rid of the criminals in our area. He's good for us,” Mehboob said.
