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| India-Pakistan |
| Taliban guerrillas bring 'Iraq tactics' to Pakistan |
| 2009-11-16 |
| Suicide attacks, car bombings, shootings in the capital and fighting in the mountains -- the Taliban are dragging Pakistan into a war deadlier than in Afghanistan and mimicking the carnage of Iraq. Taliban attacks killed at least 320 people in Pakistan last month alone, including 170 civilians slaughtered in market bombings in Peshawar, according to tallies from police and medics, and the bloodshed has continued in November. Across the border in Afghanistan -- where US President Barack Obama is mulling whether to send thousands of extra troops into battle against the Taliban -- attacks were more frequent, but the death toll for October was around 130. Pakistan is on the frontline of the US-led war on Al Qaeda and has been a key ally in the Afghan campaign, but local analysts warn that increased instability in the country of 167 million people could prove more damaging. "The danger here is much greater. It's a bigger country, more developed with the nuclear bomb and all that," said tribal affairs expert Rahimullah Yousufzai. "The previous three or four attacks in markets was a kind of strategy that was being used in Iraq ... but it will come at a cost. No guerrilla movement can survive without local support," he said. However, controversial US drone attacks on Pakistani soil have killed not only Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, but also civilians, helping to galvanise anti-American fervour. Pakistan's latest operation against the Taliban -- a month-long offensive designed to crush the havens of an estimated 10,000 homegrown Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) members -- is running into resistance. Seventeen soldiers died on Thursday in the bloodiest battle to date since Pakistan launched its offensive in the mountainous South Waziristan region on October 17, with 30,000 troops backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships. Leading TTP spokesman Azam Tariq said the group had started a "guerrilla war" in Waziristan, and would attack cities to prove "we can fight for years". "This strategy can work in Waziristan, in mountain areas, places where the army is stretched out, where the supply lines are going to be long, but the Taliban are not really trained for urban guerrilla warfare," said Yousufzai. "This cannot succeed in the plains or in the places which are far from their tribal strongholds. So they can't do it in Punjab. They cannot even do it in Peshawar -- just suicide bombers and car bombings," he said. Four bomb attacks hit the capital last week with an average of two a week since October. Market-place bombings in Peshawar, in outlying towns and the garrison city of Rawalpindi have inflicted huge casualties. Retired brigadier Mehmood Shah -- a former security chief in the tribal belt -- reflected growing dissatisfaction with the civilian government, whose President Asif Ali Zardari has reportedly strained relations with the military. Shah said parallels with Iraq should not be overplayed but recognised that "mass bombings in Pakistan in the last couple of days, in which civilians were targeted, show some similarities". "The political government needs to get out of the paralysis that they are in right now. They don't know how to respond to the situation. We need an integrated policy. People are dying in the hundreds," he said. "We can expect a guerrilla war. After defeat in South Waziristan, their next phase could be to engage the army in guerrilla warfare," said Mutahir Sheikh, head of international relations at the University of Karachi. The military claims to have captured notorious bastions in some of the most forbidding terrain in the country with lightning speed. Members of the Mehsud tribe, which dominates the TTP, say the Taliban no longer enjoy support. "May be some tribesmen helped them, but now, we the Mehsud tribe don't side with the Taliban," said tribesman Haji Khan Mohammad Mehsud, 60. Military intelligence and tribal elders say the Taliban are escaping into the mountains of neighbouring North Waziristan and Orakzai. "This is something not new to the war on terror. America marched into Iraq, into Afghanistan. There was little resistance, thinking they'd achieved their objective. Then the war began," said defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqa. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 The Iraqi people learnt to loathe jihadis as a result of their experience. There is a real probability that the Pakistani people will do the same... although at the moment I imagine the probability is still excruciatingly small. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-11-16 20:43 |
| #2 the body count in Nov is down in Afghanland this maybe because some of the talibs have gone east to pakland |
| Posted by: lord garth 2009-11-16 19:51 |
| #1 Insanity is repeating something and expecting a different result? |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-11-16 08:31 |