THE picturesque rolling hills of Mohmand tend to mask the fear and uncertainty that have seeped into its population.

Five years on from the brutal reign of the Taliban, the scars are still fresh and the future murky.

Onwards from Ghallanai, the Agency headquarters, through Mian Mandi Ganghad, the main Mohmand bazaar, and past a road cut into the side of a hill covered with loose rock is Safi tehsil, the populous settlement where the Mohmand Taliban rose to prominence.

Beyond Safi lie the areas of Bahzai and Khwazai and the Nawa Pass, the link to Kunar, Afghanistan, the province from where cross-border raids by Pakistani Taliban have been mounted with increasing frequency over the last year.An hour or two by road from Ghallanai, these areas are a world apart from the Agency`s headquarters.

`The state wants people to think Ghallanai is Mohmand, that if there is calm there, all is well,` said a local in Mian Mandi Ganghad, speaking on the condition of anonymity. `But it`s just a pretence.

There`s still trouble here.

Malik Sartaj, a local PML-N leader, was similarly sceptical: `They (the Taliban) haven`t been finished. They`ll be back. As long as the war continues in Afghanistan, there will be fighting here.

Since Operation Brekhna, `lightning` in the local dialect, concluded last September, the nature of the fight in Mohmand has changed markedly.

The local Taliban leader, Abdul Wali,who goes by the nom de guerre Omar Khalid, is believed to have fled to Kunar and a heavy security presence throughout Mohmand has caused the Taliban to melt away.

But, as in the other agencies where a counter-insurgency has been waged, the fight has morphed, not necessarily waned.

Where once it was a fight between under-resourced and under-manned security forces and a publicly defiant Taliban in substantial numbers, now it is a fight between a stifling military presence and a shadowy Taliban.

A stifling security blanket `The army and the FC have paid special attention to Mohmand because of its spe-cial location,` according to Syed Nazir Mohmand, a native of Mohmand and a retired brigadier who served in the tribal areas until 2008. `From here, Shabgadar (in Charsadda district) is right next door and then you`re onto the Peshawar ring road. It was too close to sensitive areas to leave in the hands of militants.

The journey towards Safi bears witness to a fight in which the security forces now clearly dominate the strategic hilltops and the main roads but where security personnel are still on alert and on constant look out for trouble, or even just outsiders.Up the winding road carved into the side of the hill known as Nakhai Kandahao, small checkposts manned by three or five security personnel are located every hundred yards or so. Virtually all the hilltops havesand bunkers with machine guns propped on them.

At the top of the hill is Nakhai checkpost, targeted by the militants in a bomb attack several years ago and where militants had scrawled graffiti in praise of the Taliban. The sweeping vistas ahead offer a view of the main population centre of Safi and of the mountains up ahead, on the other side of which lies the border with Afghanistan and Bajaur.

By now, gone is the pretence that there are `no no-go areas` in Mohmand, as the political agent Adil Siddig had claimed in Ghallanai.

Edgy Frontier Corps and army personnel are pulling over our vehicle at nearly every checkpost and demanding to know our purpose of visit. Quick assurances by local translators keep us moving ahead.

Eventually, having raced down Nakhai Kandahao and onto flat ground, with Safi`s main town a short distance away, we are pulled over at a military checkpost. A pursuing convoy of security vehicles catches up with us.

`You can`t go any further, an of ficer announces.

Simmering resentment As we tried to negotiate in the shade of a tree to be allowed to visit the shrine of Haji Tarungzai, the occupation of which in July 2007 marked the rise of the Mohmand Taliban, locals poured out their stories, out of earshot of security officials.

`A school was blown up ahead a little while ago. And some children playing cricket were hurt by an IED just now,` one local said. `There is no peace here.

`The security forces have cleared the area up to a couple of hundred yards on either side of the main road.

They razed everything.

People have lost their livelihoods. They (the security forces) have taken over people`s homes and set up bunkers,` another local said, speaking in a low voice.

He added: `The army has checkposts every hundred yards but they can`t even control the area between their checkposts.

Stories were whispered of excesses by the security forces against the local population and of cover-ups in this area sealed off from the outside world.

`When Salala happened (the infamous Nov 26 attack on an army checkpost in Mohmand), the people said it was God answering their prayers for all that the security forces have done to the Mohmands,` a local claimed.

Right there, a stone`s throw from the main Safi settlement and not far from the border with Afghanistan, our journey was ended. Orders had been conveyed from Ghallanai: the outsiders had to return immediately.

We were told that we can go anywhere in the Agency by the political agent, our group protested. We were told that there is peace in Mohmand, we complained.

`They can say what they want. If there were peace here, why would I be here?` the officer sent to escort us out of Mohmand said.

(Concluded)