The War in Waziristan

by Mehlaqa Samdani

On Tuesday, a month after launching Operation Rah-e-Nijat (The Path of Deliverance) in South Waziristan, the Pakistani army claimed it had “captured most (of the) main Taliban bases in their offensive…and will soon fan out into the rugged countryside to hunt for militants there”. 

The fear is that while the Pakistani military has been able to recapture territory, it has failed to capture either the militants or their ammunition. Local news sources report that the Pakistani military has experienced “little or no resistance from the militants, as all the armed men had left the area well in advance, since the campaign had been well advertised before its commencement.  Crucially, not a single important TTP ‘commander’ or foreign militant has been killed or arrested, since the launch of operations on October 17”.

There is also widespread skepticism about the government’s continuing policy of distinguishing between the good and the bad Taliban, given its recent deals with Hafiz Gulbahadur and Mullah Nazir, as well as its failure to pursue the Quetta Shura in North Wazirstan. 

Experts also believe that the operation may have pushed some Taliban into the Shawal area which “has proven to be a difficult region to control, even by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and U.S. troops operating on the other side of the border. With the limited resources Pakistan has committed to the Waziristan operation most of which will be needed to actually fight the Taliban, it seems unlikely they would be in a position to also seal off the border. The net result would be that the Pakistani Taliban becomes, if only for a while, Afghanistan’s problem, bringing further destabilization to that country’s fractious south—and the prospect that the newly arrived fighters might even take part in the Afghan insurgency”.

However, most of the militants fleeing the Waziristan operation have dispersed to Mohmand, Orakzai, Khyber and Bajaur agencies from where they have launched a wave of suicide bombings inside the NWFP. 

They also have help from their counterparts in Punjab’s heartland.  Militant groups like Laskhar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad, that had previously focused their activities against India in Kashmir and Shiites within Pakistan, have now combined their efforts against the Pakistani government.  
 

Experts believe the Pakistani government will find it difficult to “crackdown on the scale of the offensives against the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan's Swat Valley or in Waziristan (as) Punjab is too densely populated and many in the province still cling to the belief that Pakistan's next-door enemy, India, is behind much of the terrorism in Punjab”.

In addition, “vast tracts of southern Punjab are regarded as tribal areas where rule is laid down by local sardars, or feudal leaders. In some places, the only glint of law enforcement comes in the form of the poorly trained border military police, who take orders largely from feudal leaders…(therefore)… militants freely move between South Waziristan and the tribal area surrounding the southern Punjab city of Dera Ghazi Khan”.

Meanwhile, as tens of thousands of people flee South Waziristan, major editorials in Pakistan have called for a post-offensive “plan in South Waziristan….where lack of opportunities — and fear — have led many in the population of 500,000 to aid or sympathize with the Taliban…."

Military commanders have “said they expected to spend an unspecified amount of time occupying the region, but that it is up to the civilian government to come up with a plan for reconstruction and governance” The civilian government, however, has been too “too distracted by power games in the capital to give a post-conflict South Waziristan the attention it deserves”.