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Dark omens in south
Waziristan
By B Raman
Following persistent and widespread speculation
in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan about a
bloody clash between United States and Pakistani forces
near the border of Afghanistan with the FATA, reports
from Washington DC have quoted the Pentagon as
confirming that a clash, albeit of a minor nature, did
take place on December 29, 2002, near the Afghan village
of Sikhin, in which two Pakistanis were killed and an
American was injured. During the clash, an American F-16
dropped a bomb, hitting a madrassa (Muslim
religious school) in the south Waziristan area of the
FATA in Pakistani territory.
From the welter of
reports on the incident coming from the NWFP and the
FATA, it has been possible to reconstruct the following:
Unidentified elements, suspected to be from al-Qaeda or
the Taliban or both, opened fire on a US patrol near the
Pakistan border in Paktika province of Afghanistan last
week. In the ensuing exchange of fire, the US patrol
killed one Said Muhammad, a resident of Wana, the
headquarters of the South Waziristan Agency.
Hundreds of people shouting slogans against the
US and Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf,
including some Islamic fundamentalist members of the
newly elected NWFP Legislative Assembly, attended his
funeral at Wana. On December 29 (some reports say that
it was actually on December 30), another US patrol in
Afghan territory adjoining the FATA came under fire from
some elements in Pakistani territory. The firing stopped
after a while. The head of the US patrol then asked the
leader of a Pakistani paramilitary unit called the South
Waziristan Scouts, which consists largely of Pashtun
tribals recruited in the area - many of whom are related
to members of the Taliban and who are responsible for
security in the affected area - to trace those who had
fired on the US patrol and hand them over for
interrogation.
The head of the Pakistani unit
denied any knowledge of the identity of those
responsible or their whereabouts. The South Waziristan
Scouts allege that thereupon the US patrol tried to
enter Pakistani territory to search for the assailants.
The South Waziristan Scouts resisted this by opening
fire on the US patrol. There was a heavy exchange of
fire, during which the South Waziristan Scouts claim to
have killed at least seven Americans, but American
fatalities have not been admitted by the US authorities.
Thwarted in its attempts to arrest the assailants, the
US patrol called for an air strike. US helicopter
gunships dropped three bombs on a double-storey
madrassa-cum-mosque complex at a place called
Angoor Adda, run by Maulana Muhammad Hassan, of the
Taliban, who is alleged to be related to Said Muhammad.
Only two bombs struck the madrassa, severely
damaging it, while the third fell in an empty plot of
ground nearby. According to the South Waziristan Scouts,
nobody was in the madrassa complex, and hence the
US bombing was uncalled for.
A statement on the
incident issued by the US Army headquarters at the
Bagram air base in Afghanistan said that an American
soldier was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a
Pakistani border patrol, prompting the US to drop a bomb
on the border area. It claimed that the American was
part of a unit conducting a routine mission with
Pakistani forces along the Afghan border when a
disagreement appeared to break out. It added, "A
Pakistani border scout opened fire with a G3 rifle after
the US patrol asked him to return to the Pakistan side
of the border. That individual and several others
retreated to a nearby structure. Close air support was
requested and one 500-lb bomb was dropped on the target
area. We are working with the Pakistanis for an accurate
battlefield damage assessment from the incident."
According to another version given by Major
Stephen Clutter, an Afghanistan-based spokesman of the
US Army, the incident occurred on December 29 near the
Afghan town of Sikhin along the border with Pakistan. A
US F-16 fighter attacked a building after a man who
injured a US soldier ran inside it. According to him,
American and Pakistani troops were working together at
the time to blow up a cache of munitions, when the
shooter was told to leave the area. Instead, he crouched
and began firing. Clutter said that the attacker might
have been impersonating a Pakistani border guard. "I
can't speculate what was in his mind." However,
Pakistani officials have admitted that the attacker
belonged to the South Waziristan Scouts. Clutter added,
"Pakistan has been a loyal ally and I'm sure they're
just as concerned about [this incident] as we are, if in
fact he [the attacker] was a member of their force."
Captain Alaine Cramer, another US Army
spokesperson, claimed that the bomb had landed within
Afghan territory, about 300 meters from a Pakistani
border post. Major General Rashid Quereshi, the
Islamabad-based spokesman of Musharraf, also claimed
that the US plane attacked a target in Afghan and not
Pakistani territory.
The incident has caused
considerable anger against the US and Musharraf in the
Pashtun tribal belt. On January 1, the NWFP Legislative
Assembly, where anti-US and pro-Osama bin Laden and
pro-Taliban members of the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal
(MMA), the six-party fundamentalist coalition, are in a
majority, unanimously passed a resolution condemning the
alleged US bombing of a madrassa-cum-mosque in
Pakistani territory. The Jamaat-e-Islami has also
condemned it.
Before the national elections of
October 10 last year, Musharraf, in his anxiety to break
Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in the
NWFP, caused a split in the PPP and withdrew charges
under the anti-terrorism act and other laws against many
Islamic fundamentalist elements in the province to
enable them to contest the polls. The result: Islamic
fundamentalist elements, many of them relatives of
Taliban leaders and cadres, won a majority and are now
in power in this area, which is vital for the US war
against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It has been reported
that since the cabinet of the fundamentalist parties was
sworn in, many members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, who
had taken shelter in Karachi, have drifted back to the
NWFP and taken refuge in the madrassas there.
The FATA is directly administered by Islamabad
and the fundamentalist government now in power in
Peshawar does not have control over the administration
there, but there, too, the fundamentalist parties have a
strong presence. The Waziristan area has seen intense
searches by the Pakistani security forces, assisted by
experts from the US National Security Agency and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, since the beginning of
last year since many fleeing al-Qaeda, Taliban, Chechen
and Uzbeck terrorists had taken shelter there. While the
Taliban and al-Qaeda elements dispersed to other parts
of Pakistan, including Karachi, the Chechen and the
Uzbeck elements, many of them married to Pashtun women,
have stayed put, merged into the local population and
have been harassing the US forces on the Afghan side of
the border. They have recently been joined by the
Pashtun members of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; member
of the National Security Advisory Board of the
Government of India. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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