Pakistan stirs a tribal
war By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - The weekend's incident of "mistaken
fire" in which Pakistani soldiers killed at least 11
people in a shooting incident in Wana in the tribal
region of South Waziristan near the Afghan border has
virtually overnight changed the rules of the game in the
region.
The Pakistani army says that its
soldiers were firing back at militants who had attacked
an army camp, but tribesmen say that the troops opened
fire on two vehicles that failed to stop at a road
block; local people and Afghans were among the dead.
The Pakistani army last week launched a fresh
offensive against al-Qaeda, Taliban and key Afghan
resistance suspects in the tribal areas, a highly
sensitive move at the best of times in the
semi-autonomous region where the writ of Islamabad does
not apply.
The Pakistani operation is being
conducted in conjunction with United States-led troops
across the border in Afghanistan, whom, it is believed,
will round up any fleeing fugitives from Pakistan. Last
week, Pakistani officials said that they had arrested
about 20 people, but no details were given.
The
operations in the tribal region were considered a
precursor to bigger ones in Afghanistan in April and
onwards when the weather improves, but now the tribal
regions themselves could become a part of the problem.
Although President General Pervez Musharraf was
quick to set up a commission of inquiry and announce
compensation packages (US$1,700 for the families of the
11 dead, half that amount for those injured) tribals are
now likely to take on the Pakistan military. Some rocket
attacks on Pakistani military targets have already been
reported over the past few days.
Tribal
law The Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA) of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province are
located on the Pakistan side of the 2,400 kilometer long
and porous border with Afghanistan.
The tribal
areas had a population of 5.7 million according to a
1998 national census. There are seven tribal areas:
Khyber, Kurram, Orakzai, Mohmand, Bajaur, North
Waziristan and South Waziristan, all dominated by
Pashtun tribes.
The tribal areas, or agencies as
they are often called, were created by the British to
serve as a buffer between undivided India and
Afghanistan. The British devised a special system of
political administration to govern the Pashtun tribes
who resisted colonial rule with fierce determination.
The tribal people were granted maximum autonomy
and allowed to run their affairs in accordance with
their Islamic faith, customs and traditions. Tribal
elders, known as maliks, were given special
favors by the British in return for services such as
maintaining peace and apprehending anti-state and
anti-social elements. Basically, this system still
exists today, and the Pakistani courts and police have
no jurisdiction in tribal areas.
Broadly, people
in the tribal areas can be categorized as being
pro-Pakistan, or not. The former, or religious element,
can be found mostly in South Waziristan and North
Waziristan, and they also support or are sympathetic to
al-Qaeda and the Taliban. A sizeable, though not a
majority, of the population opposes the Taliban and
al-Qaeda. They could be termed as Pashtun nationalists
and they are generally against the Pakistan
establishment and army.
Before the latest
operations began in the tribal areas, Pakistani
authorities mainly contacted the religious element and
convinced them (falsely) that Pakistani military
intervention was unavoidable, or the US would bomb
Pakistani territory. The authorities assured the leaders
that the Pakistan army would only flush out foreign
fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan, and would not
let US forces into Pakistan territory. On this argument,
the tribals agreed not to be hostile towards the army.
Meanwhile, the US cultivated the nationalistic
Pashtun element. With tangible "inducements", the
tribals provided the US with intelligence on the
presence of foreign fighters, al-Qaeda and the Taliban
in Pakistani territory. Yet as soon as Pakistani troops
began their operations, US agents used this as an
example of Pakistan intervening in the tribal areas.
With the weekend's killing of 11 tribals,
sentiment among even the pro-establishment tribals has
changed, and they find themselves on the same "side" as
the nationalists, and political and religious
affiliations have been blurred. (This was fueled in part
by unconfirmed reports that US soldiers had been
involved in the shooting and were being given a free run
in the tribal areas.)
Now tribals threaten that
if there is another major mobilization of Pakistan
troops in the area, "Pakistani forces will only take
their own body bags back home".
Across the
border With much of the world's media focussed on
the highly-publicized hunt for Osama bin Laden in the
mountains that divide Pakistan and Afghanistan, another,
more secret operation was undertaken on Afghan soil in
the Kunar Valley, with the target former premier,
mujahideen veteran and resistance leader Gulbuddin
Hekmatayr.
However, a week-long operation proved
fruitless, and the coalition forces and their Afghan
counterparts remain as clueless as ever on the
whereabouts of Gulbuddin and a close band of loyalists
said to accompany him wherever he goes.
The
coalition is also more than keen to rope in other
resistance leaders, such as Kashmir Khan, Jalaluddin
Haqqani and Saifullah Mansoor, as the capture of any one
of these would be a major setback for the resistance and
a possible lead to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Until
then, the resistance continues to consolidate, and grow.
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