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War and peace in Waziristan
By Amir Mir
KARACHI -
The American commander of the US-led coalition
forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General David
Barno, stated on April 18 that terrorists were
infiltrating into Afghanistan from Pakistan, and
that Islamabad had been asked to begin a fresh
operation against remnants of Taliban and al-Qaeda
presently hiding in the Waziristan region of
Pakistan.
However, Peshawar Corps
Commander Lieutenant-General Safdar Hussain was
quick to dismiss Barno's claim on April 20,
describing it as a highly irresponsible remark:
"Lt Gen Barno should not have made that statement.
It was a figment of his imagination. There is no
bloody operation going on until we have the right
intelligence." Safdar, while ruling out joint
military operations with the US-led coalition
forces, added, "My strategy is to achieve the end
goal without firing a shot."
The Peshawar
corps commander's statement was followed by
Director General of Inter-Services Public
Relations (ISPR) Major General Shaukat Sultan's
rejoinder, claiming, "No such military operation
is being launched, and we decide for ourselves
what needs to be done and when and where." Barno
made his statement during a meeting of the
tripartite commission of the US, Afghanistan and
Pakistan that was held in Islamabad on April 18.
According to Pakistani media reports, the
US general claimed during the meeting that
remnants of Taliban and al-Qaeda were planning to
stage some high visibility attacks over the next
six to nine months, which would get them back on
the scoreboard after suffering major strategic
reversals. "The coming spring would therefore see
a fresh operation in North Waziristan to nip their
planned offensive in the bud," Barno was quoted as
saying.
Ten days later, on April 28, Barno
in an interview to The New York Times stated
further: "The Americans have been training
Pakistanis in night flying and airborne assault
tactics to combat foreign and local fighters in
the tribal areas of Pakistan near the Afghan
border." Significantly, this was the first time
the American military acknowledged the training.
Barno further admitted that the presence of
American troops in Pakistan was regarded as
extremely delicate, adding that he had visited the
Special Services Group headquarters of the
Pakistan army at Cherat, near Peshawar, recently,
where he watched a display by the units trained by
the US in their new Bell 4 helicopters.
However, the New York Times report also
quoted ISPR's Sultan as saying that there were no
American military trainers at Cherat and that
Barno had probably been referring to joint
military exercises between the two countries. He
told the newspaper in a phone interview, "The
Pakistan army has been training with many
countries of the world. We have also been
conducting joint military training with the US
Army many a time earlier. They benefit from each
other's experience. They learn from each other.
That's what has been happening, and nothing else."
Yet, contrary to the claims of the Pakistani
generals, the report stated that the Pakistan army
was gearing up to go into the last redoubts of
al-Qaeda and foreign fighters - the tribal areas
of North Waziristan near the border with
Afghanistan.
In all likelihood, Barno's
statement was not a "figment of his imagination";
he had just made public something Safdar and his
superiors did not want the Pakistani people to
know. The Pakistan army has been fighting the
invisible enemy in Waziristan without much
success, often giving an impression of failure.
Whatever the truth, statements and counter
statements by American and Pakistani generals
clearly indicate that the troubles in Waziristan
are far from over. Since military authorities have
banned the entry of the media into the region,
nobody knows what is actually going on in
Waziristan. The only available source of
information is the ISPR spokesman, whose claims
are always contested by the opposition and the
media in public.
US intelligence sleuths
stationed in Pakistan evidently believe that the
country continues to be a potential site of
militant recruitment and training, and al-Qaeda's
"operational commander" Abu Faraj al-Libbi,
presently hiding in Pakistan's tribal belt,
continues to hire local recruits to bolster up his
terrorist organization's manpower, which continues
to grow in strength despite the capture of over
500 of its operatives from within Pakistan over
the past two years. According to intelligence
sources, most of the al-Qaeda fugitives on the run
from Afghanistan are being sheltered by the
heavily armed populace on the Pak-Afghan border,
where they are being trained in terror.
US
intelligence findings indicate specifically that
some of the al-Qaeda training camps have already
been reactivated along the southeastern side of
the Pak-Afghan border. These reports further
suggest that Osama bin Laden, and his deputy,
Ayman al-Zawahiri, may also be in the region.
Meanwhile, President General Pervez Musharraf also
confirmed that bin Laden is not only alive, but is
residing in the Pak-Afghan tribal area. "Osama is
alive and I am cent percent [100%] sure that he is
hiding in Pak-Afghan tribal belt," he stated
during an April 22 interview with CNN. Similarly,
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the American
special presidential envoy and ambassador to
Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, have repeatedly
alleged that terrorists continue to operate
against Afghanistan from Pakistan.
Barno's
apprehensions that "the Taliban and al-Qaeda can
launch their big offensive from North Waziristan
in next nine months", consequently, appears to
carry weight and belies repeated claims by
Pakistan that the Waziristan area has returned to
normalcy after successful army operations. As a
matter of fact, the Peshawar corps commander,
Hussain, had declared in January that the "back of
the terrorists has been broken" and that only a
few of them had survived, "roaming around in small
batches". The corps commander's statement came two
years after the Pakistan Army started operations
in South Waziristan in January 2003. The army had
to launch the operations after being alerted by
the Americans to the presence of Taliban and
al-Qaeda elements in the Waziristan region.
Hussain had further announced in January that out
of the 6,000 foreign terrorists, 600 had already
been captured and another 150 killed. He also
admitted that, during the operations, 200 Pakistan
army personnel had been killed at the hands of the
terrorists.
The heavy losses suffered by
the Pakistan army eventually compelled its High
Command to suspend the military campaign and
pursue peace pacts with the local tribes. The
first such accord was signed at Shakai with Waziri
warlord Nek Mohammad in April 2004. Nek Mohammad
reneged and was killed by an American-guided laser
missile. The second agreement was signed at
Sararogha in February 2005 with Baitullah Mahsud,
the chieftain of the Mahsud tribe. The deal was
mediated by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam leader Maulana
Fazlur Rehman, at a ceremony that ended with
shouts of "Death to America". Interestingly, the
pact with Baitullah Mahsud did not forbid Abdullah
Mahsud, the most wanted fugitive from the Mahsud
tribe, from attacking the US forces across the
border in Afghanistan. Despite reports of his
being killed in a Pakistan army ambush in February
2005, the fact remains that Abdullah is still
alive and remains the foremost militant commander
in the Waziristan area.
Interestingly, the
Sararogha peace pact did not require that Abdullah
surrender the foreign terrorists allegedly taking
shelter with him; it simply bound him not to
attack the Pakistan army and not give shelter to
foreign terrorists. It did not bind him to lay
down arms or not fight across the Durand Line,
which demarcates the border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan. The man swears allegiance to Mullah
Mohammad Omar, the Taliban amir (chief); he
moves around in a bullet-proof car and is followed
by some 30 armed guards; he owns two castle-like
houses in North and South Waziristan. As Abdullah
Mahsud has apparently failed to honor his side of
the bargain, the Pakistan army has once again been
asked by the US to launch fresh operations in its
territory. Earlier, Barno had declared that in
February, after the signing of the Sararogha
agreement with Baitullah Mahsud: "The foreign
fighters in the tribal belt had to be killed or
captured instead of being given amnesty through
so-called peace accords."
Interestingly,
however, both peace accords make no mention of the
Pakistan army's previous condition that the tribal
militants must produce foreigners hiding in
Waziristan and ensure their registration. The
army's insistence on this condition had led to the
collapse of the Shakai agreement signed between
the Peshawar corps commander and Nek Mohammad's
militant group in April 2004. The militants'
failure to produce the foreign militants hiding in
the area had triggered a new round of fighting
that ended up in Nek's death on June 19, 2004 (see
Syed Saleem Shahzad's The legacy of Nek
Mohammed, July 20, 2004).
The
February 2005 peace agreement took an intriguing
turn on February 8, with Safdar Hussain claiming
that tribal militants demanded Rs 170 million
(US$2.8 million) during the course of peace
negotiations, and eventually settled for Rs 50
million to repay debts they owed to
al-Qaeda-linked foreign militants. The BBC quoted
the corps commander as saying that the four former
wanted militants had insisted they needed the
money to pay back huge sums to al-Qaeda. Haji
Sharif and Maulvi Abbas received Rs 15 million
each, while Maulvi Javed and Haji Mohammad Omar
were each paid Rs 10 million.
The
disclosure fueled speculation that the government
had been paying money to buy off militants in
South Waziristan. However, Haji Omar, on behalf of
the Wana militants, denied the corps commander's
claim and made it clear that he and the four other
militants had only been paid Rs 4.2 million by
retired Colonel Inamullah Wazir and the ISI
officials who negotiated with him and the other
four militants on behalf of the army, and this
amount was for rebuilding their houses that had
been destroyed during the military operations.
"Each of us received around Rs 800,000. My
brother Haji Sharif and I got a total of Rs 1.6
million, while our third brother, Noor Islam, who
wasn't part of the peace agreement, didn't receive
any money. This amount was far less than the
losses we incurred as a result of the damage
suffered by our apple orchards and demolition of
our family houses plus a hospital in Kalooshah
that alone was worth more than Rs 4 million," he
added.
The ongoing "war on terror" being
waged in the Pakistani tribal areas has clearly
not been without its share of controversies,
charges and counter-charges. This was inevitable
given the difficult nature of the military
operations and the enigmatic relationship of the
partners involved in fighting terror. But the
angry public exchange between the Peshawar corps
commander and the commander of the US forces in
Afghanistan could easily have been avoided with a
little discretion. Given the strong public
sentiments against the Bush administration in
Pakistan, especially in the areas bordering
Afghanistan, such controversies are bound to evoke
a strong public reaction and embarrass the
government.
Amir Mir, senior
assistant editor, Monthly Herald, Dawn Group of
Newspapers, Karachi.
Published with
permission from the South Asia Intelligence Review
of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
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