Pakistan Launches Attack on Taliban

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 25, 2008— -- Abdul Majeed Afridi doesn't want to sell CDs anymore. He doesn't want to spend his days in his hometown. All he wants is for the militants to leave.

"These thugs and kidnappers have tried to become the Taliban of the area," he told ABC News from Dara Adam Khel, a village in the tribal region of northwest Pakistan. "Residents are not happy with these people, and I hope this operation carries on until they're all finished."

That "operation" is a huge clash between troops and militants, launched Friday by Pakistan, part of an ominous trend of the military, battling its enemies closer and closer to major population centers.

Frontier corpsmen, backed by artillery and helicopter gunships, attacked hideouts, used by Taliban militants, in a battle that the military says will take "days."

"We tried to negotiate, this morning, and when all the negotiations failed, we had no option," said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the military. "Twenty-five to 30 miscreants have been killed, and two security forces were killed."

It is the first time that the Pakistani frontier corps has battled militants in Dara Adam Khel, a town that is no stranger to guns, but has not, up until now, hosted the radicals, who the government blames for more than 20 suicide attacks in the last three months, including the one that killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

The influence of the Taliban is spreading to previously peaceful urban areas in northwest Pakistan, towns like Peshawar and Mardan and, today, Dara Adam Khel. You can see it in the CD and DVD shops that have closed, the schools that have been threatened, because the female students aren't wearing burqas, and in the fear among the local residents.

"The militancy is spreading. The militants have become much more bolder, and much more effective," says Talat Masood, a retired army general, who has become a vocal critic of the government. "The frontier corps is least prepared for this sort of insurgency. They're not meant for this role at all."