[DAWN] Pakistain on Tuesday reiterated that the ongoing Zarb-e-Azb military offensive, launched to eliminate myrmidon hideouts in the North Wazoo tribal area, would target all bad boys, including the feared Haqqani network.Briefing a delegation of foreign media news hounds, DG Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa
... who is The Very Model of a Modern Major General...
insisted the current operation would target "Death Eaters of every hue and colour."
"That means any terrorist who is on the soil of Pakistain right now within the area of operation," he told news hounds.
"The Death Eaters of various hue and colour are not wearing different caps, so this will be an indiscriminate operation — when they (soldiers) go there they will eliminate everyone without discrimination."
The military officials also made it clear that the current operation in North Waziristan Agency was Pakistain Army's own operation and had no involvement of other foreign forces.
"It's wrong to link drone attacks with the ongoing operation," a top military official was quoted as saying during the press briefing.
Minister for States and Frontier Regions (Safron) Abdul Qadir Baloch, speaking at the same briefing, said the government was clear that no one would be allowed to use Pakistain as a base for attacks.
"Anybody who has been involved in terrorist activities, whether he is Haqqani or not Haqqani, is very much included," he said.
The Pak military also demanded Afghanistan help the offensive by stepping up efforts to eliminate the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP), Mullah Fazlullah
...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan...
, believed to be in hiding across the border.
Bajwa urged Afghanistan to do more to track down hardline holy man Fazlullah, who took over the TTP leadership last year after previous chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed by a US drone.
"This is something we have been crying hoarse — this has been raised at every level," he said.
"The leader of the TTP Mullah Fazlullah is sitting across the border in Kunar or Nuristan and Afghanistan needs to do something about it."
There have been fears that the Haqqani network, blamed for numerous deadly attacks on NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization....
forces in Afghanistan, would be spared.
US officials have in the past accused Pak intelligence agencies of links to the Haqqani network, with one top military officer once calling the hard boyz a "veritable arm" of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
Nearly half a million people have fled the fighting in North Waziristan and Bajwa said the only people left there were bad boys.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf...
doggedly pursued talks with the TTP from February, but to little avail.
A dramatic attack on Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
airport, killing dozens of people, brought a sudden, bloody end to the grinding of the peace processor and sparked the military offensive.
Rumours of a military operation circulated for months before it actually began and there are fears that hardcore hard boyz — including the Haqqanis — have melted across the porous mountain border with Afghanistan.
Resistance to the military's advance has been relatively light, adding fuel to the argument that the Death Eaters the army has vowed to smash are simply no longer there.