NEW DELHI: Fears of a Taliban takeover of the Peshawar town is top news in Pakistan media. The threat of the Taliban's influence is increasing by the day, report newspapers such as the Peshawar-based Frontier Post and the Karachi-based Daily Times.



They say that if Peshawar were to go under, there will be "virtual civil war". "The attacks (on Nato supplies outside Peshawar) have also forced many people to believe that the fall of the city to the Taliban was imminent if the situation persisted," says Daily Times.



In its Eid editorial, the Frontier Post laments the state of the nation. "The people of Pakistan are also living in trepidation and fear from terrorists and suicide bombers who have wreaked havoc in the country. Throughout the Muslim world, people do not matter in the scheme of things of the rulers, but in Pakistan people have to suffer on every count. Corruption of all descriptions and dimensions and at all levels has spread like cancer in the society. Society is divided vertically, horizontally as well as diagonally on ethnic, sectarian and regional lines."



Writing in the Frontier Post, retired brigadier Liaqat Ali Toor suggests that terrorism will end once the contentious issues are resolved in strife-torn regions such as Kashmir, Palestine etc. "Terrorism will continue to breed so long as the world's leading powers treat the humanity of weaker nations as less human than their own citizens," he says.



A Daily Times feature gets nostalgic about the decline of the famous Qissa Khawani Bazaar of Peshawar due to terrorism. The market gets its name from the tales, which travellers used to hear from professional storytellers during their stay in the city since ancient times. The storytellers became a part of folklore with the passage of time. Now only their legend survives in bazaar 'Qissa Khawani' or the 'street of storytellers.'