PESHAWAR, Pakistan — It was once known as the Parrot’s Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the U.S.-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. That was during the Cold War.

Now, the area around the town of Parachinar is near the center of the new type of struggle. The Taliban have inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under siege.

The Taliban, which have solidified control across Pakistan’s tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds to attack U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with fellow Sunni Muslims against an enclave of Shiites settled in Parachinar for centuries. The population of about 55,000 is short of food. The fruit crop is rotting, residents say, and the cost of a 66-pound bag of flour has skyrocketed to $100.

And, in a mini-conflict that yet again demonstrates the growing influence of the Taliban and the Pakistan government’s lack of control over this sensitive border area, young and old, wounded and able-bodied, have become refugees in their own land.

Thousands of displaced Shiites from Parachinar are scattered among relatives in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, and in hotels and shelters where images of Iranian religious leaders decorate the halls.

Army staying put

In June, a Pakistani government relief convoy loaded with food and medicine that had been sent to break the siege was attacked by the Taliban at the village of Pir Qayyum. Many of the 22 vehicles were burned and 12 drivers were killed by the Taliban, according to government officials here and Shiites.

And little seems to be hindering the Taliban since the army, six months ago, agreed to a peace deal with the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, and has remained in its barracks.

Groups of Taliban affiliated with Mehsud, who according to the Bush administration is supported by al-Qaida, now control wide swaths of the tribal areas, from Waziristan in the south to Bajur in the north.

From some parts of the tribal areas, like Waziristan and Mohmand, the Taliban have stepped up their operations into Afghanistan against NATO and U.S. soldiers, cross-border attacks that have resulted in rising casualties for coalition forces over the last two months, the Bush administration said.

In Kurram, the general area where Parachinar is located, the Taliban are a relatively new phenomenon, exploiting the generations-old sectarian conflict as a way of keeping the government out of the strategically important piece of territory, the senior government official in Kurram, Azam Khan, who serves as the political agent and who organized the June convoy, said in an interview.

But Shiites say the Taliban are doing more than just keeping the government at bay. The Shiites say that because they are stopping the militants from entering Afghanistan, the Taliban are attacking them.

The situation has attracted the attention of the leading Shiite figure of Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has encouraged all Shiites in Pakistan to do what they can to help their brethren in Parachinar, said Sheik Mohammed Shifah Alnajafi, the deputy representative of al-Sistani in Pakistan, and the vice principal of a Shiite seminary in the capital, Islamabad.