[Peace-discuss] What the heck is really happening in NWFP?

[Randall Cotton]

At the AWARE meeting, I mentioned there was a very wide spectrum of
reports coming out of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Provinces where the
Pakistani Army has been busy attacking insurgents/Taliban (and civilians).
The reports range from portraying the army as steadily progressing in
eliminating the insurgency with success viewed as all but inevitable
(Guardian/Observer article below) to articles that say things like "the
army has failed", citing "failure to make headway" and that they face "a
dire war of attrition" over the winter unless they pull out.



One clue is that the Guardian article is apparently the result of
"embedded" reporting (with the Pakistani Army), but it seems a real
mystery as to what's really going on in that extremely consequential
corner of Pakistan, despite the huge implications of the eventual outcome.



I've included both articles I mentioned below.

R



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/16/pakistan-afghanistan-taliban



http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JK15Df01.html



***************

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/16/pakistan-afghanistan-taliban



On the front line in war on Pakistan's Taliban



High in the mountainous north west provinces of Pakistan, government
forces are waging a bitter war against Taliban militants who have made the
region a stronghold. As US predator drones criss-cross the sky overhead,
troops on the ground endure a daily confrontation with suicide bomber
attacks, mortar fire and the piercing cold



    * Jason Burke

    * guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 16 2008 00.01 GMT




Ali Hussein, a sergeant in the Sindh Regiment of the Pakistani Army, peers
over the lip of his sandbagged machinegun pit to see the following: a
muddy patch of farmland divided into a chaos of individual fields, a row
of slender birch trees, a dry river valley and, almost invisible among the
trees half a mile away, a village called Khusar. Over his head, shells
screech through the air towards its half-dozen mud-walled houses.



A rocket-propelled grenade cracks out in solitary, futile response,
leaving a trail of spiralling smoke in the chill dawn air. There is the
continual crackle of small-arms fire, the distant thud of a mortar.



Khusar lies in Bajaur, a 500-square- mile jumble of valleys and hills high
on Pakistan's north-western border with Afghanistan. Few outside Pakistan
had heard of Bajaur until recently. But now the fighting here - the
biggest single clash of conventional forces and Islamic militants
anywhere - is being watched closely around the globe.



The battle of Bajaur has huge local and international implications.
Locally, it is a critical test for the new Pakistani civilian government
of Asif Ali Zardari, the controversial widower of Benazir Bhutto. The
recent bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad is thought to be a
response to the Bajaur offensive. Regionally, the battle is a chance for
the Pakistani Army to rebut allegations that it is dragging its feet in
the fight against international extremism. Internationally, the fight is
crucial for the 40-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan. Not only will
its result determine who controls the supply route that crosses the Khyber
Pass just to its south - where militants hijacked a 60-vehicle Nato convoy
last week - but it will also show if the semi-autonomous 'tribal agencies'
that line the mountainous zones on the Pakistan side of the frontier can
be stabilised. It is there that al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban leadership
are hiding. Peace in Afghanistan will remain a distant prospect until the
frontier is calmed.



So the efforts of men such as Sergeant Ali Hussein are being watched very
closely. When President-elect Barack Obama takes office, the file of
Pakistan, a nuclear-capable state of 173 million, will top the pile in the
foreign affairs in-tray. According to Bruce Reidel, a former CIA analyst
who has recently been appointed Obama's adviser on the region, 'every
nightmare that worries Americans about the 21st century comes together in
Pakistan in a unique and combustible way'.



To reach the combat zone in Bajaur, the Pakistani Army goes the long way
round. Last week The Observer travelled with it. Dozens of soldiers have
been killed with remote-controlled or suicide bombs on these roads in
recent months. A single Jeep takes four hours, the mammoth supply convoys
inching along the mountain roads take nine.



The convoys leave the border city of Peshawar - which has its own
problems. Fighting in the surrounding countryside has spilled into urban
areas. Last week, a suicide bomb in the city's stadium killed four people,
an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped, two journalists were wounded in an
ambush and gunmen murdered an American aid worker. 'It's going to be a
bloody few weeks and months,' said Iqbal Khattak, a Peshawar newspaper
editor.



>From the city's crowded bazaars the convoys head east, taking the new
motorway that leads to Islamabad, the capital, 120 miles away. Its six
lanes slice through haphazard fields of sugar cane and wheat where
peasants work with hoes and bullock-drawn ploughs. A few yards from the
hard shoulder, beyond a line of posts now stripped of fencing by scrap
metal thieves, lie villages where the only concrete building is the mosque
and the main fuel is dried manure.



Turning north, the convoys head towards the first hills of the Hindu Kush.
The land becomes poorer, the road narrower, the towns scruffier. A steep
climb leads into the valley of Malakand, where more than a century ago a
young British army officer called Winston Churchill fought the local
tribes in operations like those under way along the frontier today. The
relatively peaceful plains have been left behind.



Another two hours on winding roads across fast-flowing rivers and narrow
passes and you reach Bajaur, a cluster of high, fertile valleys split by
menacing ridges. Last week belts of rain lashed the dank fields and
drenched the soldiers manning the many roadblocks around the agency's
administrative centre of Khar, 15 miles back from the front.



Colonel Muhammad Nauman Saeed, who has 28 years of service, a greying
beard and Sandhurst English, explains that, after weeks of operations, the
mixed force of 4,000 troops and paramilitaries known as the Frontier Corps
has pushed the militants back to positions that will be cut off when the
snows come in a few weeks' time. The weather and a force of American and
Afghan national army soldiers across the frontier will mean they are boxed
in.



'Originally there were 5,000 militants and we have killed half of them at
least,' the colonel said. His troops have lost 84 killed and 320 injured
since the operation began.



A few hundred yards from his office, artillery fires salvos, sending
orange flares of flame through the rain. From Khar, a dirt road leads to
the front. Villages are deserted, the bazaars shut, the crops rot in the
fields. Dozens of houses converted into strongholds by the militants have
been demolished or occupied by the army. There is the constant rattle of
small-arms fire, and the crack of rocket-propelled grenades and artillery
overhead.



The front itself is a chaos of burnt-out homes, wrecked vehicles and
pockets of bizarrely bucolic calm.



More than 200,000 civilians have fled and are now scattered in camps or
living with relatives across the province.



Bajaur's recent history is repeated all along the frontier. In the
aftermath of 2001, militants fleeing from Nato operations in Afghanistan,
as well as Pakistan's own intermittent crackdowns on internal extremist
groups, were able to exploit the social upheaval caused by conflict and
economic change to establish themselves.



In Bajaur, local men formed bands around those with guns and access to
cash, elbowing aside traditional tribal leaders. Militant leaders include
a former teashop owner, a gunman, a known criminal and a minor cleric. One
is from the violence-racked Kunar valley in Afghanistan. 'They are men
from economically and socially marginalised elements in tribal society,'
said a Peshawar-based expert and former senior bureaucrat, Khalid Aziz.



The disparate groups based themselves in the village of its chief and,
with money and a little military training from al-Qaeda, soon established
a miniature version of a hardline Islamist state, preaching jihad, closing
girls' schools and DVD shops, and killing tribal leaders who stood in
their way. According to Mohammed Shah, a former chief of security in the
region, 'they are a loose federation rather than a unified movement'.



Al-Qaeda figures may have passed through Bajaur but did not stay. They did
not need to. The brand of radical Islam that Osama bin Laden and others
have succeeded in popularising in recent decades provided the glue for the
various bands and the justification for the fight against their own
government. The religious schools, which offer a free education, provided
the footsoldiers. A skirmish this summer provided the spark for all-out
war.



'They were not looking for a fight, but had prepared carefully for battle
when it came', said Colonel Nauman. 'They are dug into complex,
interlocking tunnel and bunker networks, and have huge reserves of
ammunition.'



Bajaur, the northernmost of the seven tribal agencies along the frontier,
had acted as a key entry point to and from Afghanistan, said Major-General
Tariq Khan, the overall commander of the Bajaur operation, and was thus of
'immense strategic importance'.




A series of similar military operations over recent years has failed to
pacify the tribal areas, often resulting in peace agreements controversial
in Washington and Kabul. but lessons had been learnt, Khan said. The
current operation would be 'the model' for the future. Last week troops
started pushing into Mohmand, the next agency to the south.



Khan stressed the commitment of his troops. 'When our troops come into
contact with the militants, they do not see them as Pakistanis or brother
Muslims or whatever. They see them as the enemy. Those who have any
doubts - and there are some - are those who have not come into contact
with the reality on the ground.'



But the Pakistani Army still views the battles it is fighting against
extremists very differently from Western strategists and policy-makers.
Scores of private conversations with soldiers of all ranks reveal that few
see themselves as fighting in a 'war on terror' that many of them abhor.



Many believe that India, Pakistan's long-term regional rival, and
Afghanistan are manipulating the militants fighting in Pakistan. In a
mirror image of the Western analysis that attributes the success of the
Taliban in Afghanistan to their bases in Pakistan, the Pakistani officers
blame the war in Afghanistan for their troubles at home.



Privately few have much good to say about the West either. Anti-American
sentiment is widespread. Many - both on the front line and at senior
levels - doubt that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. Instead the
officers and men interviewed by The Observer see their fight as a
necessary struggle to purge their own nation of an internal threat. 'It is
our war, not anyone else's,' said Colonel Nauman.



For many such officers, both the presence of al-Qaeda on their territory
and the pressure from Washington to play a greater role in the war on
terror complicate the situation. American money, technical assistance and
equipment is welcome - the Pakistani military has received about £7bn from
the US since 2001 - but interference on the ground is not. 'When it comes
to operations in the tribal areas ... sometimes our agendas coincide,
sometimes they do not,' admitted Major-General Khan.



Many oppose the remote-controlled missile strikes that, although they have
killed many senior international militant figures, have enraged local
people. Two villages hit in Bajaur agency in 2006 are now militant
strongholds. The strikes are likely to continue, however. Western
intelligence sources insist they have played a major role in disrupting
potential terror attacks in the West and locally and have so demoralised
al-Qaeda's leadership that key figures now sleep outside under trees and
are convinced their organisation has been infiltrated.



One other key development being eagerly watched in Bajaur is the activity
of local tribesmen who have formed so-called lashkars, traditional
informal armed tribal militias that deal with specific problems, to force
the militants out of their areas. 'The tribesmen have risen against the
militants. It could be the turning point in our fight against militancy,'
said Owais Ghani, the governor of the North-West Frontier Province.



Few doubt the eventual winner of the battle of Bajaur. Even senior
militants are already melting away. The Observer found one in a slum area
in Karachi, 1,000 miles to the south, earlier this month. But the question
is what happens next. The key, analysts and soldiers agree, will be the
political follow-through.



'The solutions to this conflict will not be military alone. The military
can open up space for the administration of justice, political activity
and development, said Major-General Tariq Khan. 'If we don't go down that
road we will be in a vacuum, but I am sure these efforts are in train.'



Others are suggesting major political reform to end the tribal areas'
special status and consequent isolation. A £500m development plan financed
by the US has been launched. Britain has similar, smaller-scale projects.
Yet with Pakistan's plunging economy and political instability, it is
doubtful that the politicians and bureaucrats can - or want to - fill the
vacuum.



Interviewed in Peshawar, captured militants predictably denied fighting in
Bajaur. Instead most said their target was 'only' the 'Western occupiers'
in Afghanistan, believing that such statements, made in front of Pakistani
officers, would be appreciated by their audience.



One, however, was unashamed about his actions against his own government.
The oldest of his fellow prisoners and alleged to be senior commander in
Bajaur, the 45-year-old, a relatively wealthy man, said: 'If I am
released, I will go straight back to what I was doing. Jihad is the only
true path.'



The Khyber Pass: The Crossroads of Battle



At the foot of the Khyber Pass, only a hundred yards from where Pakistani
dust becomes Afghan dust, is the busy frontier post of Torkham.



There, amid a chaos of overladen trucks, ragged children, tradesmen and
fretful travellers, a blue painted stone lists the invaders who have
crossed and recrossed this strategic staging post in the Hindu Kush.



>From Alexander the Great's infantry to Mughal horsemen to British redcoats
on punitive expeditions into Afghanistan to Winston Churchill to the Nato
logistics trucks of today, few armies in the region have not fought,
bribed or threatened their way through the massive cliffs and hairpins of
the Khyber.



Even though the Soviets never penetrated Pakistan, the anti-tank ditches
dug to stop them trying still lie beside the road adjacent to the badges
of British regiments that are painted on the black rocks.



Last week, as Pakistani armed forces continued their battle with Taliban
militants in Bajaur to the north where there is another crucial but much
less famous crossing, there came a reminder that the Khyber remains as
lawless as ever when trucks ferrying supplies to western forces in
Afghanistan were hijacked by militants who later posed for photographs in
front of the Humvee military vehicles before being chased off by attack
helicopters.



But the Khyber is also a historic trade route too, for licit and illicit
goods. Once it was caravans of spices, textiles, tea or looted wealth
travelling between the plains of India and Persia or Europe. Later, camel
trains brought the melons, pomegranates, horses and fat-tailed goats of
Afghanistan.



In the 1990s convoys of local men would carry fridges and freezers across
to Afghanistan only to bring them straight back, a customs dodge taking
advantage of local trade agreements. But soldier, smuggler or honest
merchant, no one has ever crossed the Khyber without the assent of the
locals or without a fight.



For centuries, traders crossing the Khyber Pass have been routinely

'taxed' by local tribes, which have earned their living by providing 'safe
conduct' to travellers. And the Pashtun clans living around the pass have
always fiercely resisted any challenges to their autonomy.



*********



http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JK15Df01.html



Pakistan torn over its tribal areas

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Nov 15, 2008



KARACHI - With the winter snows fast approaching, Pakistan's security
forces face a race against time over whether or not to pull out of the
Swat Valley in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where for the past
one-and-a-half years they have been fighting a losing battle against
militants.



The militants occupy about 80% of the strategically vital area near the
border with Afghanistan and have managed to choke most supply lines.
General Headquarters in Rawalpindi realizes that should the more than
10,000 troops there not be pulled out, they will face a dire war of
attrition, but if they leave, the militants will gain strength.



Kabal and Kanju are the only war theatres left in the valley with battles
raging and with the military in partial control, but come winter, its
supply lines will be compromised. The militants are able to sustain
themselves, partially as a result of having captured numerous army supply
trucks and containers.



The dilemma for the army is that if it does retreat under the guise of a
peace treaty, it will allow the Taliban to strengthen its bases even
further in preparation for the next offensive in Afghanistan in the
spring. The anticipation is that the Taliban will receive an unprecedented
boost in recruits.



As in the Bajaur Agency, the army has failed in the Swat Valley as the
troops are mostly ethnic Pashtun, as are the people against whom they are
fighting. As a result, there has been an over-reliance on air power, which
only serves to drive the militants temporarily into the mountains or into
Afghanistan.



Once the militants retreat, the army does not try to take command of the
ground as it rightly fears guerrilla attacks and the militants come back.
This hide and seek game has given the militants the upper hand in NWFP and
significantly fueled the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan.



After its failure to make headway in Bajaur, the army went into Mohmand
Agency, in Federally Administered Tribal Areas from where fresh fighters
and supplies were aiding the Taliban in Bajaur.



This opening of a new front against powerful commander Abdul Wali had a
cascading effect. Much of the population moved to the capital of NWFP,
Peshawar, and other places, allowing the Taliban to open up fronts in the
towns of Sabqadar and Michini, situated on the northern edges of Peshawar.



In the past few days the Taliban have infiltrated into Peshawar, where
they have killed a worker of USAID, the American government's development
arm, and abducted an Iranian diplomat.



In Khyber Agency, unmanned US Predator drones have targeted the Tera
Valley, but have failed to hit any targets of significance. However, in
the process, pro-government, anti-al-Qaeda militants belonging to the Vice
and Virtue organization of slain Haji Namdar have agreed to join hands
with the local Taliban to fight against foreign troops in Afghanistan.



The drone attacks were carried out last week, and since then North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supply convoys have been looted
frequently. Pakistani newspapers have published pictures of militants
moving around in NATO armored personnel carriers.



This new alliance will strengthen militant attacks in Afghanistan's
Nangarhar province, which has been quiet for the past several months. On
Thursday, the Taliban attacked a NATO convoy in Nangarhar near the city of
Jalalabad. NATO said that several Afghan soldiers were killed while the
Taliban claimed the killing of five NATO soldiers.



It's going to be a very long winter for the Pakistani army, whether it
stays in the tribal areas or whether it retreats, while next spring could
be the hottest ever in Afghanistan.



Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002 at yahoo.com