Pakistan expelled an American academic who wrote about the rise of pro-Taliban militants in New York Times Magazine, a media rights group said.
A statement issued by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the Pakistani Interior Ministry issued a deportation order to Nicholas Schmidle on Tuesday -- less than a week after his report, "Next-Gen Taliban," appeared in the magazine.
"CPJ is unfortunately accustomed to reporting on the government's attacks on the local media, but now harassment seems to be spreading to foreign journalists as well," CPJ executive director Joel Simon said.
Schmidle's article, published on Jan. 6, was based on interviews with clerics and fugitive militant leaders on the run or fighting security forces in the valley of Swat and in tribal areas along the Afghan border.
To write it, he "secretly traveled" to militant strongholds, prompting authorities to expel him, a security official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Schmidle was a visiting scholar at Pakistan's state-run Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad and occasionally wrote media articles.
An official at the press information department said Schmidle was not in the country on a journalist visa.
The official, who also declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to media, said the Information Ministry served a deportation order on Schmidle because he had traveled to "sensitive areas" -- but then withdrew it. He did not say why. Schmidle then left Pakistan on his own accord, he said.
Journalists must seek permission from the Interior Ministry before traveling to volatile northwest Pakistan.
Speaking from London on Friday, Schmidle told the CPJ he was "extremely disappointed at being asked to leave Pakistan" and that his visa contained "no restrictions whatsoever," the statement said.
The magazine's editor, Scott Malcomson, told CJP that authorities did not explain to Schmidle why he was being deported, but he said the move was clearly connected to his writing.
Islamic militants, meanwhile, attempted to attack a Pakistani military base close to the Afghan border, sparking fighting that killed between 40 and 50 of the insurgents, the army said yesterday.
The clashes were some of the bloodiest in weeks in the lawless region -- a militant stronghold where several top al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are thought be hiding.
Up to 300 militants staged the attack in Lhada on Wednesday and early on Thursday, but were repelled by artillery and small-arms fire, the army said in a statement.
"Intelligence resources revealed the killing of [between] 40 and 50 militants," it said.
On Saturday, security forces arrested 59 insurgents after they attacked police with rockets, the statement said.
The border region emerged as a front line in the war on terror after Pakistan allied itself with the US following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Washington has given Pakistan billions of dollars in aid to help government forces battle militants.
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