Living Hell in the Swat Valley.....

The Taliban makes life intolerable in Pakistan's Swat valley....

Sitting on a cold floor in a mud house on the outskirts of Peshawar, Akbar Ali fights back tears about getting his five children and pregnant wife out of 'hell' in Pakistan's Swat valley.

When religious extremists came to his village, his life as a respected local headmaster fell apart. Today he hears that Aligrama has become a ghost village, overrun by rebels and damaged by army shelling.

Thousands of followers of radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah are waging a violent campaign to impose their extremist interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, beheading opponents, threatening detractors and fighting the government.

The displaced say civilisation as they knew it has collapsed in the picturesque and historic valley. A lucrative tourist industry for Western and Pakistani holidaymakers after skiing and mountain hikes -- decimated.

'The lives of ordinary people in Swat get worse and worse. It's like living in hell. There's no trade. Nobody's safe. Militants rule most of the area and anybody who opposes them is killed,' he said.

'Everything in Swat is destroyed, they are bombing schools, killing notables and targeting government employees.

'All women's institutions are closed. There is no entertainment, no CD or music shops, and most hairdressers are closed,' he added.

Ali's nightmare began about 14 months ago when the Taliban warned him to close the girls' section of his village school, the 41-year-old said.

'Masked militants armed with rocket launchers, small and heavy weapons started patrolling our village.

'First they told us to sack the female staff at school and then ordered us to close the female section or face the consequences,' he told AFP.

'So we were forced to shut the classes where some 135 female students were getting an education. This created panic among the boys and the number of students dropped from 435 to 125,' he said.

Six months ago, he fled Aligrama for nearby Mingora, the main town in the region. The militants closed in again, killing teachers and bombing schools, so he left Swat in January and followed five of his brothers to Peshawar.