On April 26, Pakistan Army launched an attack on the Taliban in Lower Dir killing 70 militants and losing 10 soldiers. It also displaced nearly 30,000 people. On April 28 in Buner, as helicopter gunships and jets strafed their positions, the Taliban captured nearly 70 policemen and soldiers. The army dropped airborne troops behind Taliban lines and freed 18 of them. Fifty militants were killed in the first two days of fighting. The army said it would take a week to drive the Taliban out of Buner.
Why the sudden violence? The Taliban's advance into Buner was a violation of the peace deal America had opposed. But at first neither the government nor the army reacted. On April 22, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Pakistan was becoming a "mortal threat" to the world. Its government and people, she said, needed to "speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents". On April 25, she expressed concern for the safety of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
Some Western diplomats considered this scare-mongering. Of course, there was no chance of the Taliban seizing Islamabad. Taliban are not popular in Pakistan. Also, Mullah Fazlullah is not known to be linked to Al Qaeda.
Yet Clinton had a point. Even President Asif Ali Zardari concedes that the Taliban hold "huge amounts of land". And the army has been fighting militants only to make deals giving militants the run of their areas in return for a promise of good behaviour.
In Waziristan, Taliban commanders are believed to play host to Al Qaeda's core leadership. They also send their men across the border to fight Western and Afghan forces.
America has been delighted by the army's assault in Buner. A Pentagon spokesman called it "exactly the appropriate response". Some American officials believe the army will even resume its offensive in Swat; and this time crush Fazalullah. But will Malakand prove a turning point for Pakistan. Probably not, answers The Economist.
Western governments see a direct connection between militancy along the 'Af-Pak' borderlands and bombings in Western cities. Yet Pakistan is an even bigger victim. Around half a million people are estimated to have been displaced by fighting. The country has suffered more than 120 suicide-bombings in the past two years and Benazir Bhutto, a two-time former prime minister was one high-profile victim. Foreigners are also at risk.
The new US policy is intended to arrest this slide. It will come with a lot more money but Pakistan will be expected to provide better accounting for how it spends this money.
By one Western estimate, the army has lost over 1,500 soldiers and 70 percent of its battles against the Taliban. But the Malakand peace deal, shortly after US envoy Richard Holbrooke's first visit to Pakistan alarmed the Americans. Swat is not like the Tribal Areas. It is thickly populated and from here militant could expand into Punjab.
When it was eventually signed by Zardari, an American spokesman said, the peace deal violated human rights. But most Pakistanis seemed to welcome the deal that promised to end the fighting that has gone on since mid-2007. Around 800 people had been killed in a heavy-handed army action and at least 100,000 displaced.
Maj Gen Athar Abbas, the chief army spokesman, defended the Swat ceasefire deal saying it had isolated Mullah Fazlullah by bolstering Sufi Muhammad, the chief of the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi. But the ceasefire enabled the Taliban to tighten their grip on Swat. In early April, they occupied Bahrain and on April 28 shot and injured a policeman there and kidnapped another.
On April 24, the Taliban leader in Buner claimed to have been sent there by Mullah Fazlullah to see that sharia law was being followed. His men chased away the district police and killed eight locals for putting up resistance.
But the government has neither abrogated the Swat deal nor made any effort to use the ceasefire to extend its writ in the valley. And the army does not appear to want to resume the fighting in Swat.
Only for the US: Doing no more than the minimum under American pressure is not new. One of the tricks used by the former president, Pervez Musharraf, was to arrest a few former jihadis only to later release them.
In early 2007, the authorities backed a Taliban commander, Muhammad Nazir, to expel some Uzbek militants. But Nazir did not evict his Arab 'guests' and in February declared an alliance with Baitullah Mehsud, another Taliban leader.
More recently, Abdul Aziz, the chief cleric of Islamabad's Red Mosque, was released from jail on April 16. Within hours of his release, he was in the pulpit, claiming credit for the introduction of sharia in Swat.
Old friends: Pakistan's failure to suppress the latest Lashkar-e-Tayyaba incarnation too suggests to the West that the army has not abandoned its old proxy and still considers India to be its main enemy.
Increasingly, senior American officials have decreed Pakistan's 'obsession' with India. Commander of US Central Command Gen David Petraeus argues that Pakistan faces greater danger from home-grown extremism.
Maj Gen Abbas suggests he does not think much of this.
It seems that -- convinced that Islamist militancy poses a much lesser threat to Pakistan than America reckons -- the army will always be an awkward ally for the West. Equally, America is a difficult friend for Pakistan. Its pressing objective is to stanch the flow of Taliban into Afghanistan and to crush Al Qaeda's leadership. These are not the priorities for many Pakistanis. Also, Pakistan reasonably argues that the cross-border insurgency has been inflamed by America's own blunders in Afghanistan and its missile strikes into Pakistan.
The army says it takes a longer-term view of what is required. In Swat, for example, it seems there is no need to kill many civilians to pulverise the Taliban. This is not entirely unreasonable.
Many in Swat also seem to believe that, once sharia is instituted, the militants will fade away.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/02/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
SPACEWAR/TOPIX > IS PAKISTAN ANOTHER IRAN [Enemy is itself, save for already being nukulaar]???
Following the failures of the Boer wars Kipling wrote, âIts a difficult thing to admit it, but as a grown-up nation we should; weâve had a hell of a beating, it will do us no end of good.â Is there a Kipling in Great Britain today? If so, he or she is probably a journalist or blogger, and likely dismissed as a malcontent.
It may or may not be time to ask the question, but I donât think they are capable politically to have an honest debate across the pond right now, so Iâll use this space to ask the question.
I have been reading about the final withdrawal of the British military from Iraq. I am quoting from this BBC article discussing the withdrawal.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
05/02/2009 16:51 Comments ||
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#2
No. The British Army was defeated in London, yet again. I wonder how many volunteers the American forces will get as a result in the years to come, a la Rantburg's own Atomic Conspiracy.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
On April 26, Pakistan Army launched an attack on the Taliban in Lower Dir killing 70 militants and losing 10 soldiers. It also displaced nearly 30,000 people. On April 28 in Buner, as helicopter gunships and jets strafed their positions, the Taliban captured nearly 70 policemen and soldiers. The army dropped airborne troops behind Taliban lines and freed 18 of them. Fifty militants were killed in the first two days of fighting. The army said it would take a week to drive the Taliban out of Buner.
