Pakistan Region in Grip of Fear As Leader Begins to Implement Sharia Law

With his flowing white beard and thick spectacles, Sufi Muhammad has an avuncular air about him that can initially appear reassuring.

But all that changes when the 70-year-old kingpin of the Swat valley opens his mouth to promise more of the kind of punishment meted out to the 17-year-old local woman captured in the mobile video footage.

Muhammad is leader of an Islamist movement that has long since agitated for sharia justice. And he took a big step towards his objective in February when he struck a "peace for sharia" deal with the authorities under which the Taliban would stop a two-year armed campaign in the region in return for the establishment of new religious courts. In a rare interview with any media outlet, domestic or foreign, he told the Guardian that the new courts would formalize penalties including flogging, chopping off hands and stoning to death.

Floggings are the correct punishment, Muhammad explained, for sexual intercourse between unmarried people, drinking alcohol and slander. Thieves should have their hands chopped off - unless they were poor people stealing to feed themselves. And, for adultery, stoning to death.

"These punishments are prescribed in Islam. No one can stop that. It is god's law," said Muhammad, sitting on the floor in his makeshift headquarters in Mingora, the regional capital. An aide, Ameer Izzat, hurriedly added the tough criteria that must be met for such sentences. For adultery, there must be four witnesses who actually saw the act of penetration.

The descent of Swat from the country's favourite honeymoon destination to Taliban stronghold mirrors Pakistan's own decline into violence and chaos over the past two years.

Once this picturesque valley of orchards and rushing streams 100 miles from Islamabad contained Pakistan's only ski resort. But in 2007 the Taliban began a violent campaign to seize control of the valley, shutting girls schools and prohibiting women from shopping. By the beginning of this year their takeover was all but complete, forcing the government to sue for peace.

Muhammad's group, the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), or Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, has renounced violence and is believed to hold the puritans of the Taliban at arm's length.

The provincial authorities struck a deal with him hoping that he would be able to influence the local Taliban leader, Mullah Fazlullah, who is his son-in-law. But despite the "peace deal", the situation is far from settled. This week in Swat Taliban forcibly occupied the house of a member of parliament and overran an emerald mine.

And things could slide back into violence if Muhammad walks away from the deal, as he has pledged to do if the new courts are not fully operational soon.

"Our responsibility is to maintain the peace. When the demand [for sharia] is met the Taliban will put down their weapons. We will see to that.

"But if the government doesn't agree to implement the deal, we will just go," said Sufi Muhammad, speaking in Pushto, the regional language. "Then, I don't know what will happen."

The peace deal has meant that girls' schools are open again and shops have removed signs barring women. But locals have few illusions about who has won.

"Ninety percent of the people of Swat wanted the militants to be defeated by the Pakistan forces, just eliminated. But that was wishful thinking," said Zia-ud-Din Yusufzai, the headmaster of a private school in Mingora, who believes, like many Swatis, that the Pakistan army was unwilling to fight the Taliban.

"For us, a doubtful peace is far better than a doubtful war, where the parties were not known, their aims were not known ... Swat has been assigned to the militants."

The masked Taliban gunmen are no longer on the streets of Mingora. Locals no longer wake up to find their neighbors hanging from poles in the squares of the city. The bazaar is bustling once more (though with few women). But the atmosphere is edgy.

The Swat peace deal required the Taliban to stop displaying their weapons, not disarm or surrender. So, everyone knows some of the men in the market in Mingora and elsewhere in Swat are bound to be Taliban, carrying hidden guns. They have just melted back into the population. No one knows who is Taliban now and who is not - perhaps the man staring menacingly at a street corner, possibly the market vendor selling jihadi DVDs. Kidnapping - this time for ransom - is on the rise and few people dare venture out after dark.

At Mingora's courts there is chaos. The new Islamic judges are sitting - not yet entitled to hand down sentences, pending that presidential signature on the peace deal - but there is no court process worked out. Litigants just mob the court, shouting, jostling, pushing forward. There is little paperwork, and no lawyers involved.

Aftab Alam, president of the Swat Lawyers Association, said that the creaking colonial-era legal system needed to be speeded up, not replaced.

"They [the Taliban] want to establish a complete autonomous state, that's the real agenda," said Alam. "A utopian empire, a Taliban empire. Sometimes utopias become real."

The Swat Taliban are waiting on the sidelines. Their spokesman and key commander, Muslim Khan, said, by telephone from an undisclosed location, that they would see to it that sharia was implemented, "whether the government likes it or not". Khan added: "Swat is a test case. After this, it [sharia] should be brought in in the whole of Pakistan. How can we have British law here? It is the task of the Taliban to make them agree. It is our right, 95% of the population is Muslim."