Swat Assault Fills Emigres in N.Y. With Dread

NEW YORK -- Bad news came to Ali Khan in Brooklyn when he bought a phone card and got through to his wife trapped in fighting in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. His cousin was dead, his neighbor's child was maimed, and other relatives fled carrying nothing, she told him.

Combat between government forces and Taliban fighters is tearing up the remote valley where Khan was born. Hundreds of thousands of residents are fleeing, and hospitals are filled with the injured. Yet journalists and most outsiders have been prevented from entering Swat. News accounts have relied on army briefings.

About 7,000 miles away, here in Brooklyn, amid pizzerias, ice-cream trucks and the clatter of the subway, the biggest Pakistani community in the United States has an ear to the battleground.

"We want to hear everything because we wish we could be there," said Khan, 30, a construction worker. "We want to protect our families. What can we do? Nothing. So we call them."

Khan said he communicates with his teacher wife, Maynaz, by text message or phone every few hours. There is no electricity, and she recharges her cellphone in a relative's car. Fighting is close enough for him to hear shelling.

His wife reports that the Pakistani army is firing heavy artillery from the mountaintops and strafing the valley from fighter planes, Khan said Friday. The Taliban reportedly has installed land mines and roadside bombs. The army has instituted an 18-hour-a-day curfew, he said.

"She asks, 'What do you think I should do? Do you think I should leave home and go elsewhere?' " said Khan, through a translator. "I say: 'I don't know. You decide.' "

About 35,000 Pakistanis live near the main artery of Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn and in neighboring Queens. Community leaders said about 300 of them come from the Swat district.

On Thursday, Zameen Khan was killed outside his home in Swat. He was a cousin of Ali Khan, who has been here for three years, and a son-in-law of Suhail Khan, 60, who has been here for 15 years.

As with many of the important events of his life, Suhail Khan, a construction worker, heard about the death over the phone. Early Thursday, Pakistani fighter jets dropped a bomb near the family home, Suhail Khan said his daughter told him. Her husband went outside to check on the children, who had just left for school.

"My daughter tried to stop him and told him not to go out, but he was worried about the kids and just left," Suhail Khan said. Zameen Khan was struck by another bomb as he took a shortcut through a neighbor's yard.

"People have cellphones there and here; everybody knows news in a few minutes," said Bakhtmand Yar, another native of Swat.