Costs of War: The Waziristan Problem
By Shaun Waterman for ISN
After a external pagestring of terror attacks last week, including one at its own general headquarters, the Pakistani military Saturday finally launched its long-heralded offensive against extremists in South Waziristan.
About 28,000 troops moved in on three fronts, with artillery and air support continuing bombardment of suspected strongholds of the Pakistani Taliban Movement, or TTP.
Extremist heartland
In many ways, Waziristan is the geographical heartland of that confluence of foreign and domestic extremist networks, inaccessible terrain and ungovernable, martial tribal traditions that have made the whole Afghan-Pakistan border such a problem for US strategy in its war against al-Qaida. Many analysts still finger it as the most likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
“Nearly every major jihadist plot against western targets in the last two decades somehow leads back to” this border region, external pagenotes al-Qaida expert Peter Bergen.
And it is camps in the tribal areas that are the focus of growing recent concern about European extremists being recruited and groomed for the next wave of al-Qaida operations, external pagereports the Washington Post.
Security threat for Islamabad
But victory in South Waziristan, where Pakistani authorities say the recent string of terror attacks was planned, is also increasingly seen as essential for Islamabad, which some analysts say is now facing a serious - if not existential - security threat from the TTP and other extremist networks.
It is noteworthy, external pageaccording to author and journalist Ahmed Rashid, that several of the extremists who carried out last week’s string of attacks came not from the Pashtun tribes that provide TTP with fighters, but from “Punjabi and Kashmiri factions who were until recently trained by the Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) to fight Indian forces in Indian Kashmir.”
The increasing convergence of extremist groups in Pakistan has long been viewed with concern by western counter-terrorist officials, because of the links these latter factions still have within the nation’s military, intelligence and security apparatus.
Path to deliverance
The external pagemilitary said Monday that operation ‘Rah-i-Nijat,’ or ‘Path to Deliverance,’ was progressing well, but it is not the first time in recent years that the army has attempted an offensive against extremists in mountainous and lightly governed South Waziristan, one of seven quasi-autonomous tribal agencies that line the Pakistan side of the border.
And the precedents aren’t encouraging.
In 2004, the Pakistani army suffered heavy casualties when they launched a similar offensive there. Another incursion in 2008 resulted in a hastily drawn up peace agreement which helped strengthen the al-Qaida and Taliban sanctuary in Waziristan. During these prior operations, “some units refused to fight or surrendered en masse without firing a shot,” external pagewrote blogger and counter-insurgency specialist Bill Roggio in his Long War Journal.
But Roggio also points out that the military has tried to maximize its chances this time around, using artillery and airstrikes to soften up suspected TTP strongholds and reportedly striking deals with three other Pashtun extremist militias in the area - those led by Mullah Nazir, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Hafiz Gul Bahadar.
If the army can keep those forces out of the fight, Roggio says, it faces 10,000 TTP-trained fighters who have been battle-hardened in fighting both with NATO forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistani army during past operations in Waziristan. Estimates of the numbers of foreign fighters - almost all from the al-Qaida affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan - vary between 500 and 6,000. Another 20,000 less well armed and trained tribal fighters are also likely to join the fighting against the army.
Because Nazir and Bahadar have up to another 30,000 fighters between them, “It is imperative that the army keep [them] out of the fight as it does not have sufficient forces to take on all three groups at once,” concludes Roggio.
He predicts that “The Taliban will operate in small units, melt into the population, and focus on ambushing supply and troop columns [...]. The Pakistani military will attempt to control the roads; occupy the high ground; set up garrison in the towns; and starve out, freeze out, and bomb out the Taliban.”
An analysis by the Austin, Texas-based private sector security firm Stratfor points out that, although the TTP has “alienated some of the local population through its repressive tactics,” by comparison with recent operation in the nearby Swat valley, which enjoyed string support from residents, “locals [in Waziristan] are much more wary of the military's actions and are not confident that the military will end up winning the conflict outright.”
Under such circumstances, “follow-on measures to secure the population and make the area inhospitable for militants will be as crucial as the initial offensive,” the Stratfor analysis says.
The impossible truth
Unfortunately, this kind of follow-on success has eluded the military in previous incursions, and it will be next to impossible to get any ground truth about what is going on in Waziristan as the army has closed the area to reporters, denied requests for media to embed with their forces and apparently cut phone services to the area.
One clue might be found in the flood of civilians leaving the area, as many as 160,000 in the past few days, according to aid officials in nearby Dera Ismail Khan external pagecited by the Guardian. The paper said there appeared to be little provision for the refugees, who complained of indiscriminate shelling and air strikes by the army.
The external pageBBC quoted aid agencies as saying they had been asked by government officials not to provide assistance to those fleeing the tribal areas because of fears aid might be channeled back to kinfolk involved in the fighting.