After five days of fierce fighting and heavy casualties on both sides, the Pakistani military turned today to tribal elders to try to persuade hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters surrounded in the mountainous border region to surrender. The military called a temporary cease-fire while it held a jirga, or traditional tribal council, of all regional tribes in the town of Wana, said Brig. Mehmood Shah, the security chief in Pakistan's tribal areas. It was agreed at the meeting, he said, that elders would try to mediate a surrender of the armed militants and the release of some 14 soldiers and government officials they are holding hostage.
| Those hostages are likely the only reason, Pak perfidy aside, why the villages haven't been turned into paste. This is also the third cease-fire, by my count. |
The move was clearly prompted by the rising anger of local people to the military action that has killed at least 17 Pakistani soldiers and some 25 militants as well as a number of civilians. A family of 12 people, including women and children, was reported killed when their vehicle came under fire on Saturday as they were leaving their home. But the military's change of tactic may also be because it has made slow progress in the face of unexpectedly fierce resistance from the foreign militants. Brigadier Shah said Sunday that resistance appeared to be dying down and intercepted communications between the militants suggested that they were running out of ammunition. Yet he also conceded that it could take a month to clean up the area of resistance, where 500 to 600 militants and local tribesman are scattered over some 20 square miles of terrain. "The search could wind up in a couple of days but the clean-up operation to flush out foreign militants from the area could last for about a month," he said in an interview in the city of Peshawar. Reports were received six weeks ago that either Mr. Zawahiri or even Osama bin Laden was hiding in the Shawal Mountains, which lie on the border between North and South Waziristan and Afghanistan, two Pakistani officials said in recent interviews. But the Qaeda leader left the area before the lead could be pursued, and is now believed to be moving through the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Pakistani officials said.
| If he's heading for Afghanistan, Task Force 121 will be happy to welcome him there. |
Instead the Pakistanis have run up against hardened Uzbek fighters, remnants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group and strong ally of the Taliban that favors traditional guerrilla fighting over terrorism. Pakistani officials are now acknowledging what Afghan officials have been saying for a year, namely that the Uzbeks, along with some Arabs and other Russian-speaking fighters, have been sheltering in the tribal areas of south Waziristan since escaping Afghanistan in spring 2002.
| I'm shocked! Who could have possibly thought that? |
They are the last effective group of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has been all but crushed, despite a few reported incidents in Central Asia attributed to the movement. Yet the Uzbeks remain among the toughest fighters the Taliban, Afghanistan's former rulers, ever commanded. Afghan intelligence officials have blamed many of the cross-border attacks inflicted on Afghan and American military positions in southeastern Afghanistan in the last year on these fighters. The Uzbeks have also clashed with Pakistani forces in Azam Warzak, the scene of the current fighting, before — in June 2002, when 30 to 40 fighters escaped from a farmhouse where they had been surrounded. A week later, Pakistani forces ambushed a vehicle full of Uzbeks in north Waziristan. |