Friday, October 23, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
From NY Times
By JANE PERLEZ
Published: October 17, 2009
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan moved large contingents of its troops into the militant stronghold of South Waziristan on Saturday, the army said, beginning a long-anticipated ground offensive against militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban in treacherous terrain that has overwhelmed the army in the past.
The operation is the most ambitious by the Pakistani Army against the militants, who have unleashed a torrent of attacks against top security installations in the last 10 days in anticipation of the assault. The militants’ targets included the army headquarters where planning for the new offensive has been underway for four months.
The United States has been pressing the army to move ahead with the campaign in South Waziristan, arguing that it is vital for Pakistan to show resolve against the Qaeda-fortified Pakistani Taliban, which now embraces a vast and dedicated network of militant groups arrayed against the state, including some nurtured by Pakistan to fight India.
The officials said the fighting there would probably not help the American effort in Afghanistan to a great extent since the Taliban stronghold within South Waziristan is not along the border with Afghanistan.
The front in South Waziristan was the fourth operation by the army against the Taliban in a year, and the campaigns in the less remote parts of the country’s tribal areas have shown how hard guerrilla tactics have proved for an army trained in conventional warfare against its archenemy, India.
In Bajaur and Mohmand, two tribal areas close to the provincial capital of Peshawar and far less mountainous than South Waziristan, the army has been forced to launch repeated air attacks against persistent Taliban attacks, even though much of the area was declared cleared of militants almost a year ago. Civilians who fled Bajaur and Mohmand have been unable to return, and towns flattened by the army have remained in tatters.
Even in the Swat Valley, where the military was able to make most cities safe enough for residents to return, the army was unable to knock out the leadership.
In Washington, senior American military officials were monitoring the long-awaited offensive closely, with some top officers expressing skepticism about how extensive a ground campaign the Pakistani Army would actually carry out.
“This is going to be much tougher than their offensives in Swat and Bajaur this year,” said one top American officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We just don’t know how committed the army will be.”
Precise information about the start of the assault Saturday was impossible to verify immediately. No reporters are traveling with the troops, and phones in Wana, the administrative capital of South Waziristan, were not answered Saturday.
But it was clear that the military faced a potent, highly armed enemy that has been preparing for months, bringing in reinforcements from across Pakistan’s tribal region, and diverting Taliban from Afghanistan.
In South Waziristan, the Taliban centered around the Mehsud tribe are relying on hardened Uzbek fighters, and despite the death of the leader, Baitullah Mehsud, by an American missile in August, the Taliban leadership appears largely intact.
The guerrillas are practiced at hit-and-run tactics designed to keep the troops bottled up until the snow falls next month and well beyond. Bunkers and tunnels have been under construction with the help of excavation machinery commandeered in the past several years from local contractors, civilians from South Waziristan said.
Pakistan’s civilian government met with the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, on Friday, and a statement afterward said that the government had approved the operation.
In the North-West Frontier Province, civilian officials said Saturday that they had been told by the military that soldiers were moving in a pincer movement from government areas in Shakhai in the west, Razmak in the north into Makeen and from Jandola in the east into Spinkai Raghzai.
In the last few days, fighter jets have hammered the mountainous enclave, where the Pakistani Taliban, now led by Hakimullah Mehsud, keep their operations center, according to civilians in Wana who had been reached by telephone at the time.
The region inside a ring of government-held towns, Jandola, Razmak and Shakhai, is the homeland of the Mehsud tribe, who have a reputation as the fiercest of fighters in Pakistan.
In a taste of Taliban tactics, an army convoy heading to the area of operations from North Waziristan was hit by a remote-controlled bomb Saturday, killing two soldiers and wounding four others, according to a journalist reached by telephone in Miram Shah, the capital of North Waziristan. That area in North Waziristan was supposed to have been neutralized after talks between a militant group headed by Gul Bahadar and the military, the journalist said.
Most of the areas where the army is headed are 6,000 to 7,000 feet high. In previous operations against the Taliban in the same area — in 2004, in 2005 and again in early 2008 — the army sued for peace.
This time, under the leadership of General Kayani, the army is better prepared. It also has been left little choice on whether to take on the operation given the onslaught of attacks by the Taliban and Al Qaeda against the Pakistani state, politicians have said in the past several weeks.
The United States was expected to provide additional surveillance, reconnaissance and eavesdropping equipment to the Pakistani military, and possibly increase noncombat Predator drone surveillance flights over the rugged mountainous battle area to help the Pakistani forces identify and target Taliban strongholds.
Earlier this summer, the United States resumed secret drone flights performing military surveillance in the tribal areas to provide Pakistani commanders with a wide array of videos and other information on militants, according to American officials.
About 28,000 soldiers were involved in the operation in South Waziristan and were set to face about 10,000 militants, including 1,500 particularly tough Uzbek fighters, army officials said.
The proportion of soldiers to militants did not appear to be very high, some military specialists said, noting that in the Swat Valley in May, the Pakistani Army fielded more than 30,000 soldiers against a similar number of less experienced militants.
The army expected the South Waziristan operation to last about two months, a period that stretches into the winter season there, a Pakistani official who has been briefed by the military said.
The military was confident that this time the soldiers could retake and hold the Mehsud area, the official said.
But military experts noted that South Waziristan sits at the southern tip of the tribal areas, and needed a much longer supply line than Bajaur and Mohmand.
Tens of thousands civilians have fled South Waziristan in the past few months in anticipation of fighting, moving in with relatives all over Pakistan. Thousands more have moved into government-held towns on the edge of South Waziristan in the last several days, United Nations officials said.
With a normal population of about 500,000, South Waziristan is now probably empty of most civilians not involved with the militants, provincial officials said.
Still the number of displaced residents was not expected to come close to the more than one million people who left the Swat Valley last May, they said.
The preparations for the South Waziristan campaign had been thorough, but the effort is fraught with uncertainties, said a former brigadier, Javaid Hussain.
“It is the fear of the unknown that is weighing very heavily on those involved in the planning,” he said.
Reporting was contributed by Ismail Khan and Pir Zubair Shah from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)