 | An all-out battle for control of North and South Waziristan is about to commence between the army, the Taliban and their Al Qaeda adherents, according to a report published in The Asia Times. The report states that a Pakistani security official, speaking to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, said the army aimed to completely pacify the two Waziristans “once and for all”. |
 Uhuh. We might think of this routine as the anti-haka. Where the haka is meant to intimidate the enemy and fire up the participants, the anti-haka is designed to give the opponent the opportunity to discretely remove himself so the dancer and strut for awhile, make a few political points, and then retire from the field, having accomplished nothing and allowing the opponent to resume his activities. |
According to the report, the fighting in North Waziristan that erupted two weeks ago and turned thousands of families into refugees while killing more people than any India-Pakistan war, is merely a precursor of the battle that is coming.
| Right. And having 250 troops at a pop surrender is merely a precursor. |
Clear message: “The army has sent a clear message to the militants that Pakistan would deploy its forces in the towns of Mir Ali, Miranshah, Dand-i-Darpa Kheil, Shawal, Razmak, Magaroti, Kalosha and Angor Ada. It aims to establish permanent bases which would be manned by thousands of military and paramilitary troops,” the security official said.
| "Really fierce ones, too! Youse guys should be really scared! You oughta go to Barmal or Jalalabad or Kandahar for awhile, don'tcha think?" |
He said the army recently delivered an ultimatum to the militants that had the army set a deadline to give safe passage into Afghanistan to all Al Qaeda members and Taliban commanders who, along with wanted tribal warrior leaders, would leave Pakistan and never return. The militants rejected the ultimatum.
| He said the army recently delivered an ultimatum to the militants that had the army set a deadline to give safe passage into Afghanistan to all Al Qaeda members and Taliban commanders who, along with wanted tribal warrior leaders, would leave Pakistan and never return. The militants rejected the ultimatum. |
Now, that's a pretty breathtaking pair of sentences. All this while the pretence has been that Pakistain was on our side. They told us about all the troops they had deployed in those areas, and how they had taken casualties in the interest of the War on Terror. We were assured that there are no al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and that the Talibs were an Afghan phenomenon. We were assured of these things even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in the form of corpses and passports and the JUI-Fazl flag flying over the occasional Talib-occupied town and the occasional Qaeda big being arrested in a prominent JI member's house. So that pretense is gone.
Secondly, think of the possibility of the Pak military, which by their own admission trains for conventional war with India or... ummm... India, beating up the Talibs, the Uzbeks, the Chechens, and all the other heavily armed riff-raff inhabiting the area. They haven't done it to date, they've tried avoiding the fight, and when they've been shamed or shoved into it they've had their sitters handed to them despite the judicious use of tribal lashkars to avoid the exchange of live ammunition.
The "militants" not only rejected the ultimatum, they're probably laughing themselves silly at this moment. |
A qualified estimate by intelligence officials is that successful military pacification of the Waziristans would slash Afghan resistance by 85 percent, while also delivering a serious setback to the Iraqi resistance.
| And there's the second jaw-dropping, stunning admission of utter duplicity. Not that it's anything we didn't know, but they never actually admit to it. I may have mentioned a time or two in these pages that the Taliban is a Pak, not an Afghan phenomenon. So now I stand corrected: it's a 15 percent Afghan, 85 percent Pak phenomenon... |
The militants, meanwhile, have little option but to stand and fight. Aside from the sanctuary afforded them in the Waziristans, their presence there also has a direct bearing on their funding: money can be transferred through bank and non-bank channels, including the informal fund transfer system known as “hawala”.
| Shiite soldiers are being sent to the Waziristans because the army has been plagued by desertions of Pashtun and Sunni troops who refused to fight fellow Pashtuns or Sunnis in the past. |
Western intelligence that has been shared with Pakistan has determined that the two Waziristans alone provide a steady stream of fighters, supplies and funds for the resistance in all of southeast Afghanistan, including the provinces of Ghazni, Kunar, Gardez, Paktia and Paktika. In addition, the Waziristans supply trainers to guerrillas in Zabul, Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces. There is also a Kurd presence in the area, which has a direct bearing on the USÂ’s Iraqi occupation. Kurd recruits come through Iran into Waziristan, get trained and then return to infiltrate Iraq to fuel insurgency in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Likely targets: However, the report adds that the safety of Taliban and Al Qaeda assets in Waziristan is a matter of life and death and, therefore, the militants have decided to target the cities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, hoping to break the will of the armed forces. The military, meanwhile, is trying to break the will of the militants with ongoing bombing raids. Underscoring the seriousness with which the military is planning for the coming battle, it is reported that Shiite soldiers are being sent to the Waziristans because the army has been plagued by desertions of Pashtun and Sunni troops who refused to fight fellow Pashtuns or Sunnis in the past. |