Islamabad: Taliban militants in Pakistan's northwestern SWAT valley have set up a special bureau for arranging "love marriages" for couples barred by their families from tying the knot with partners of their choice.
The bureau named 'Shuba-e-Aroosat', which is headed by Taliban commander Abu Ammad, has arranged 11 "love marriages" in the past nine days, militant spokesman Muslim Khan was quoted as saying by BBC Urdu service.
Another 300 men and women are waiting for their turn to marry. "The love marriage aspirants contact the bureau on a fixed telephone number. The Taliban collect their particulars and then contact their families to arrange these marriages," Khan said.
Islam allows every adult to marry according to his own choice, he said. "Most of the girls or their families who contacted us wished to marry militant Taliban," Khan claimed.
Some analysts said the Taliban were paving the way for militants to marry women of their choice. Some people have also questioned how the militants could allow the flogging of men and women for being seen together in public while at the same time facilitating the youth to marry according to their own choice.
Some people have also questioned how it would be possible for a man or woman to propose while the Taliban bars them from seeing each other.
Taliban fighters loyal to Maulana Fazlullah now control most parts of the Swat valley, located 160 km from Islamabad.
They have barred women from going to markets on their own and bombed or torched some 200 girls' schools. The militants have also warned men to wear skull caps and to stop shaving their beards.