Tide turns against the Taliban

In Pakistan there has been a real change in the past few months - the public has had enough of the Taliban and the army has gone to war. As a result well over one million people have been forced to flee their homes.

I have come to a place about an hour's drive from Peshawar, 50 miles (80km) from where there has been intense fighting.

There are many people on the move here who have run away from that fighting and they have brought with them eyewitness accounts of the brutal things they have seen under the Taliban's control of the Swat valley over the past few months.

"They were beheading people, they were shooting innocent people without any warning, they were terrifying us," one woman tells me.

"They were stopping our kids from going to school, they were kidnapping young boys."

A man standing nearby is also eager to talk.

"With my own hands I have buried 18 people who were beheaded, even children," he tells me grimly.

"They are not friends, they are not our allies, they're our enemies, they are criminals, they are gangsters."

New mood

Such strong public criticism of the Taliban is new - the mood has changed in Pakistan...

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