Pakistani jets bomb S Waziristan
Pakistani aircraft have attacked suspected Taliban fighters in South Waziristan near the Afghan border, in advance of an imminent ground assault.
The air raids on Sunday night came less than 24 hours after commandos stormed an office building and rescued dozens of security officials taken captive after an attack on the general army headquarters in Rawalpindi.
"The jets hit and destroyed two of their hideouts in Makeen and Ladha and we have a total of about 16 militants killed," a unnamed Pakistani intelligence official told Reuters news agency.
But the military has been conducting air and artillery strikes in South Waziristan for months, while moving troops, blockading the region and trying to split armed opposition to Islamabad's authority.
However, a ground offensive has yet to begin and may prove to be the army's toughest test since fighters turned on the state.
Imminent attack
Nevertheless, Rehman Malik, the interior minister, in an interview in Singapore said a ground offensive was "imminent".
"There is no mercy for them because our determination and resolve is to flush them out," he said.
"They have no room in Pakistan, I promise you."
Malik said members of the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda were suspected to have been behind Saturday's attack on army headquarters, which ended a week when suicide bombers struck in the capital Islamabad and Peshawar, killing more than 50 people.
He also said the offensive against the fighters in South Waziristan was no longer a matter of choice.
"It is not an issue of commitment, it is becoming a compulsion because there was an appeal from the local tribes that we should do the operation," Malik said.
Provincial links
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Imtiaz Gul, a political analyst, said he agreed that the government was correct to commence an offensive against South Waziristan.
"A lot of al-Qaeda and ideologically tainted people belonging to the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan under the patronage of the Taliban are sheltering there," he said.
But not everyone agrees. Zafar Jaspal, a Pakistani analyst, believes that Islamabad has concentrated too much on the Swat valley and South Waziristan.
"Till today, the government has no clear strategy on how to deal with the militants who are residing in southern Punjab," he told Al Jazeera.
"The person who was captured alive after [the GHQ attack] comes from Punjab, and other members of that group are also from Punjab ... certainly the government needs to have a parallel strategy - for Punjab as well as South Waziristan."
Al Jazeera
Comment:
And so it begins.
This is not quite the final push — Orakzai is still in the Taliban's hands — but it might as well be. Once Waziristan has been won, the fate of the Pakistani Taliban will have been sealed. Most surviving militants will probably flee into Afghanistan, in a remarkable mirroring of the events eight years ago. This time, though, the US military will be there to meet them. The tactical imperative of increasing the number of troops in eastern Afghanistan is more clear now than ever: a Taliban surge is coming, and there must be an American surge to counter it.
Showing posts with label Orakzai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orakzai. Show all posts
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Friday, October 10, 2008
Blast hits Pakistan tribal meeting
An explosion at a meeting of tribal elders in northwest Pakistan has killed at least 20 people and wounded 70 others, an official said.
The suspected suicide bombing happened on Friday in the Orakzai district, one of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous tribal regions, security officials said.
"We were busy in raising a lashkar [a tribal militia] to evict Taliban from the region when this attack took place," Qeemat Khan Orakzai, a member of the council, told the Reuters news agency.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The members of the Alizai tribe had met in the town of Ghaljo in mountainous Orakzai, which is the only one of the tribal regions that does not border Afghanistan.
'Hideouts' destroyed
A security official said that the attack came a day after tribesmen had targeted two hideouts belonging to pro-Taliban groups operating in the area.
"The tribesmen blew up two hideouts of the militants a day earlier and it is possible this attack was in revenge for their actions," a security official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.
The bombing came a day after four tribal elders in Bajaur, a tribal region north of Orakzai, were abducted and beheaded after attending another pro-government meeting, officials said.
"People will tell you that Pakistan is already in a state of war. Every day there are suicide bombings," Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from the North West Frontier province, said.
"The violence is escalating at a time that the national assembly is not able to come to grips with the situation.
"The death toll could rise further," he said.
Violence has intensified across Pakistan in recent months since the army began an offensive against the pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in the Bajaur and Swat regions.
Orakzai, near the main northwest city of Peshawar, has been relatively peaceful compared to the other tribal regions.
Via Al Jazeera.
Comment:
The stupidity of the Taliban is breathtaking. I am at a loss as to how a Californian suburbanite has a better understanding of tribal politics than a group that's based in a heavily tribal region. When the tribes told the Taliban that they should leave because of the effect that their war with the Pakistani security forces was having on civilians, they should have done so. They should have pulled back to Waziristan, where the Pakistani government still has little inclination to fight them. Then, once the security forces had been withdrawn, they should have begun re-infiltrating the northern districts and agencies. That was their only real option, because the tribes are the reality, and you cannot declare war on reality and win.
Of course, the Taliban should never have let it come to this in the first place. From the very beginning, they should have been trying to bring tribal elders over to their side— through bribery, conversion, or what have you. They should have jockeyed for power within the tribes, perhaps poisoning the odd rival, or having a rival group take him out. When they did take such action towards an elder, it should never have been direct; proxies, or even false flags, should always have been used. They should have formed alliances, exploited old feuds, and arranged strategic marriages to solidify these networks of support. This would have established themselves as a major, if not the major, political power. This was the logical, reasonable thing to do. It's what the Prophet Muḥammad did. If they had done it, the security forces would have been the ones to receive the ultimatum, not them.
But they did not do it, and they did receive the ultimatum, and they are responding to it in the worst conceivable way. Beheading elders? This sends a very clear message, not only to the tribesmen of the elders in question, but also to all of the other tribesmen. If I were a Waziri elder, I would be getting very nervous right about now.
The suspected suicide bombing happened on Friday in the Orakzai district, one of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous tribal regions, security officials said.
"We were busy in raising a lashkar [a tribal militia] to evict Taliban from the region when this attack took place," Qeemat Khan Orakzai, a member of the council, told the Reuters news agency.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The members of the Alizai tribe had met in the town of Ghaljo in mountainous Orakzai, which is the only one of the tribal regions that does not border Afghanistan.
'Hideouts' destroyed
A security official said that the attack came a day after tribesmen had targeted two hideouts belonging to pro-Taliban groups operating in the area.
"The tribesmen blew up two hideouts of the militants a day earlier and it is possible this attack was in revenge for their actions," a security official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.
The bombing came a day after four tribal elders in Bajaur, a tribal region north of Orakzai, were abducted and beheaded after attending another pro-government meeting, officials said.
"People will tell you that Pakistan is already in a state of war. Every day there are suicide bombings," Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from the North West Frontier province, said.
"The violence is escalating at a time that the national assembly is not able to come to grips with the situation.
"The death toll could rise further," he said.
Violence has intensified across Pakistan in recent months since the army began an offensive against the pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in the Bajaur and Swat regions.
Orakzai, near the main northwest city of Peshawar, has been relatively peaceful compared to the other tribal regions.
Via Al Jazeera.
Comment:
The stupidity of the Taliban is breathtaking. I am at a loss as to how a Californian suburbanite has a better understanding of tribal politics than a group that's based in a heavily tribal region. When the tribes told the Taliban that they should leave because of the effect that their war with the Pakistani security forces was having on civilians, they should have done so. They should have pulled back to Waziristan, where the Pakistani government still has little inclination to fight them. Then, once the security forces had been withdrawn, they should have begun re-infiltrating the northern districts and agencies. That was their only real option, because the tribes are the reality, and you cannot declare war on reality and win.
Of course, the Taliban should never have let it come to this in the first place. From the very beginning, they should have been trying to bring tribal elders over to their side— through bribery, conversion, or what have you. They should have jockeyed for power within the tribes, perhaps poisoning the odd rival, or having a rival group take him out. When they did take such action towards an elder, it should never have been direct; proxies, or even false flags, should always have been used. They should have formed alliances, exploited old feuds, and arranged strategic marriages to solidify these networks of support. This would have established themselves as a major, if not the major, political power. This was the logical, reasonable thing to do. It's what the Prophet Muḥammad did. If they had done it, the security forces would have been the ones to receive the ultimatum, not them.
But they did not do it, and they did receive the ultimatum, and they are responding to it in the worst conceivable way. Beheading elders? This sends a very clear message, not only to the tribesmen of the elders in question, but also to all of the other tribesmen. If I were a Waziri elder, I would be getting very nervous right about now.
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