Pakistan secures Taliban hub; militiamen dance

DAMADOLA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan has driven out al Qaeda and the Taliban from one of their main nerve centres near the Afghan border, where it has been fighting militants for nearly two years, a top commander said on Tuesday.

But many of the militants have crossed the border into Afghanistan from the Bajaur region, and others have melted away into other parts of Pakistan, a problem government forces often encounter in their battle against insurgents.

Pakistan's military took reporters to the former militant bastion of Damadola, where al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri was in recent years believed to have been hiding.

"The Pakistan flag is flying for the first time since 1947," said Major General Tariq Khan regional commander of the Pakistani paramilitary Frontiers Corps, describing an area long dominated by ethnic Pashtun tribes that fell into the hands of militants.

"We have concluded operations up to the Afghan border. We think the Bajaur operations have now more or less ended as dedicated military operations."

The village of Damadola, with snow-capped mountains in the distance, has been largely destroyed in the fighting.

In 2008, the army mounted an offensive in Bajaur and later said it had largely cleared militants from the area, but clashes have erupted again in recent months.

The militants' determination to hold its territory was evident in the more than 150 caves they dug into the mountains.

One was littered with blankets and pillows where fighters had been sleeping.

In Bajaur's main town of Khar, hundreds of members of a pro-government militia, known as a lashkar, held a show of force in support of the Pakistani military in a battle-scarred market. Many townspeople stood on the roof of a pock-marked shell of a building, looking on as militiamen banged drums, danced with their assault rifles held aloft and chanting "Long Live Pakistan."

LEADERS ESCAPE

It's the kind of scene that will encourage the United States as it presses ally Pakistan to clear out militant strongholds and win over the people in its semi-autonomous Pashtun border lands.

U.S. forces have been battling the Taliban for years over the border in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar.

Pakistani offensives, such as the one in Bajaur, could ease pressure on U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan and disrupt al Qaeda from plotting violence in the region and beyond.

While the military has been showing off its gains, many Taliban fighters and their leaders, including the main regional commander, Faqir Mohammad, have escaped the sweep and may try to come back as they have done before.

"I would give you a rough estimate that about 25 percent must have gone across the border; another about 10 or 15 percent might have melted back into the areas of Swat (Valley) etc., where they'd come from," General Khan said.

"A substantial amount of them have been killed, but that is just an estimate. Nobody can give you an factual figure of how many people are running up and down. They can't even find Osama bin Laden yet."

U.S. intelligence has long had its eye on Bajaur, and in particular Damadola village.

Eighteen people were killed in Damadola in January 2006 in a U.S. drone strike aimed at al Qaeda second-in-command Zawahri.

Pakistani intelligence officials said at the time Zawahri was believed to have made visits to the Bajaur area, though he was not in Damadola, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Islamabad, at the time of the attack.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robert Birsel and Bill Tarrant)