Waziristan last month ostensibly to hunt down al Qaida and Talibanelements has been a visible failure which could dramatically alterthe already existing fault lines in the force divided betweenloyalty to Musharraf, nation and religion.
South Waziristan is one of the seven areas -Khyber, Kurram,Orakzai, Mohmand, Bajaur, North and South Waziristan - which wereclubbed together as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)by the British who wanted a buffer zone between undivided India andAfghanistan. The topography is rugged and remote, a staggeringchain of dry, barren mountains dotted with deep ravines andvalleys. The area remained out of bounds for the Pak Army foralmost a century till the first reconnaissance teams weredispatched after the US decided to launch Operation EnduringFreedom in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban following the September11 attack.
In the current operations, the Pak Army deployed more than 75000troops in addition to scores of tribal lashkars (armies) along a2400-km long border. Most of the troops deployed were part of thetwo Corps deployed on the western borders and the Frontier Corps(FC) which is a paramilitary force led by officers deputed from theArmy. The men are recruited from the local area and are thereforeconversant with the language, regional mores and topography. Thebasic handicap the FC troops had was they were not trained for amilitary operation, leave alone counter-insurgency. So far, theirpredominant role has been to check smuggling, especially drugs andcontraband and to intervene in tribal feuds. Drugs have been amajor problem after the Taliban fall. Before the Taliban collapse,1685 acres in the region were under poppy cultivation which shot to30750 acres within a year. The area, after the US entry, has alsobecome a transit for fake American currency smuggling. Recently,the authorities seized fake US dollars worth 76000 which wereprinted in Singapore and were being routed through the tribal areasto the mainland.
As for the Army, the first time the troops entered the area openlywas in 2001 when the US wanted Pakistan to help the coalitionforces in Afghanistan. Their mission, at that time, was to seal thePak-Afghan border-the Durand Line-- so that the Taliban and alQaida elements fleeing the US bombing could be trapped and caughtor killed. The tribals did not oppose the Army's entry as theyconsidered it the national army and did not perceive the troops asa threat to their sovereignty. The October-December 2001 operationwas based on the Hammer and Anvil strategy. The US-led coalitionforces were to aggressively pursue the Taliban and al Qaidaelements towards the Durand Line, since most of them were holed upin the mountains close to the border, where the Pak troops wouldtrap them. The operation was partially successful but left much tobe desired. Not all those who fled the US bombings could be stoppedat Durand Line; scores escaped the net and fanned out acrossPakistan, including some of the top commanders of al Qaida, KhalidMohammad Sheikh (caught months later in Rawalpindi in the house ofa religious leader, protected by a Major and his willing seniors),Ramzi bin al-shibh (caught from Karachi after a gun battle) and AbuZubeydah (from Peshawar after US intelligence agencies interceptedhis satellite phone calls to al Qaida members). In one way, thefailure of the operation outweighed the limited success as many ofthose escaped the dragnet joined hands with religious extremistgroups and terrorist groups operating within Pakistan to attackwestern targets, one of which was the American journalist DanielPearl. What should have alarmed the authorities (it did not) wasthe fact that several Army officers deployed in the area were morekeen to let the Taliban and al Qaida elements escape rather thanconfront the tribal communities more out of sympathy than any otherfactor. At least 30 per cent of the Pak Army is drawn from theNorth West Frontier Province. Although the Pakistan Army has twoCorps on the western borders, it has no traditional supply orlogistic lines in the tribal areas like South Waziristan. In anycase, the primary role of the two Corps in the west is to act asreserve formations to support the seven Corps deployed on theeastern front (India). It would be wrong to say that the Pak Armywas completely alien to the area prior to October 2001. In fact,the ISI, Pak Army and the US intelligence and security forces toraise local guerilla brigades to fight the Soviet forces occupyingAfghanistan in the early '80s. During the Afghan Jihad, in fact theborder between Afghanistan and Pakistan ceased to exist as theregion was turned into a main supply route for the jihadis.
Ironically, similar factors were responsible for the failure of theoperations in South Waziristan. The operational plan this time toowas Hammer and Anvil with the US-led coalition troops numbering13,500 lined up along Paktika (Afghanistan) -Waziristan borderacting as Hammer (operation Mountain Storm) and 75,000 Pakistanisecurity forces assuming the role of Anvil. This was the firstfatal flaw. The American coalition, fighting a resurgent Talibanand a group of 30 warlords who refused to align with them, failedto move up the mountains, which the intelligence agencies have beenclaiming sheltered Osama bin Laden, and other top leaders of alQaida. The result was the Pak troops were asked to aggressivelypursue the terrorist groups sheltering in their side of the border.There were two reasons why this sudden turnabout had disastrousfallout. First, the Army had no specific intelligence about theso-called terrorist elements and their movements. Many of those whoare called terrorists (by the US) are the ones who had been part ofthe US Jihad in Afghanistan in the '80s and had settled in theregion after marrying the local women. There are certainly otherswho had come to Afghanistan from different corners of the world tofight the US forces and remained in the safe environs of the tribalareas where they could buy protection. Besides, the region ispopulated with Afghan refugees which made it extremely difficult todistinguish terrorist elements from the civilian population.
Second was the decision to deploy heavy artillery (mortars,shoulder-fired rocket propelled guns, heavy machine guns, RR guns)in an area of 50 sq kms which was cordoned off. The terrorists andtheir tribal supporters are masters of guerilla warfare, hardenedby years of ambush, raid and concealment. For the Pak Army, trainedto fight another conventionally trained army in the east, thedecision proved to be disastrous as the gun battle left at least 46troops killed and scores injured. When eight soldiers were ambushedand executed and more than a dozen civilians and FCnon-commissioned officers were captured, the authorities wereforced to call in combat helicopters to take out the terrorists.(There are also reports that at one time the commanders had eventhought of calling for air raids-getting Chinese A5 fighters fromthe Peshawar base.) The deployment of gunship within the borderssignalled a major military failure which only became worse when onehelicopter raid killed 16 civilians, including 13 women andchildren, forcing the commanders to withdraw the US-supplied Apachehelicopters and seek help from the tribal leaders to settle theissue.
It is not difficult to predict what the heavy casualty and themission failure could generate in an Army which has been at thereceiving end of proxy commands from Pentagon, leaving many in theofficer corps infuriated, dissatisfied with their General andturning to `Faith, Piety and Jihad in the Way of Allah', the mottoof Pakistan Army.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author anddo not necessarily reflect those of Observer ResearchFoundation.
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