Rah-e-Nejat Update

I have compiled a basic map showing Operation Rah-e-Nejat (click for larger version). Green icons indicate cities held by the Pakistani Army and black icons those held by the Taliban. The three red lines are the three "axes" referred to in news reports: the Razmak-Makin Axis, the Shakai-Kaniguram Axis, and the Jandola-Sararogha Axis. Note that while Kaniguram is still held by the Taliban, it has been surrounded by Pakistani forces and will probably soon fall.

Waziristan offensive "imminent"

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.

Pakistan 'expands war on Taliban'

Pakistan's military is beginning a significant move into South Waziristan, where the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan - or the Pakistani Taliban - are based, US officials have said.

The operation is said to be targeting Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and will be carried out with greater support from the US.

Witnesses and intelligence officials said Pakistani aircraft had bombed a stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud on Saturday, the Pakistani Taliban leader, in the South Waziristan.

"Four fighter jets bombed parts of Makken early on Saturday but we don't know about the extent of damage or any casualties," Mohammad Khan, a shopkeeper in the area said.

Pakistan's Geo TV reported that large numbers of people were migrating from South Waziristan to North Waziristan.

"Operations that appear to be under way now would be the largest operations that have been undertaken in Waziristan," a US defence official said on Friday.

"We think that the initial phases of that operation have already begun."

Pakistan says it has almost completed an offensive to drive Taliban fighters out of the Swat Valley, an area to the north of Waziristan in North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Fight 'to the end'

Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, said on Saturday he would fight the Pakistani Taliban "to the end".

"This war has the support of parliament, the support of the political parties as well as the people of Pakistan," he said in a televised address to the nation broadcast after 1am (1900 GMT on Friday).

"We are fighting a war for our sovereignty. We will continue this war until the end, and we will win it at any cost," he said.

"These people want to capture the institutions of Pakistan by spreading terrorism and by intimidating the people.

"They have killed thousands of innocent people."

Zardari's comments came after two suicide bomb attacks on Friday, claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, in Lahore and Nowshera, in NWFP, killed at least eight people, including a pro-government religious leader.

Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi, known to oppose the Taliban, had condemned the use of suicide bombings.

The US defence official said on Friday that the Pentagon expected Pakistan to conduct "fairly significant combat operations in South Waziristan".

Another US official said Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders were "under very significant pressure", while a third US official said the US would be providing increased intelligence and surveillance support to Pakistan.

Taliban 'resistance'

Pakistan's recent operations have been under way for six weeks, taking the military first into Buner and Upper Dir districts, then into the Swat Valley.

The first US official warned that "isolated pockets of resistance still remain" in parts of the Swat valley as the Pakistani army worked to finish the two-month campaign, and that Islamabad needed to brace for more attacks.

"[Mehsud] has turned suicide bombing into a production output not unlike Toyota outputs cars," the official, who described the Mehsud as leading an extensive network of religious schools that sold or bartered child suicide bombers in NWFP, said.

The key element of the US Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, the defence official said, is to have troops put pressure on al-Qaea and Taliban fighters believed to be operating out of safe havens in Waziristan.

From Al Jazeera.


Comment:

First a president was elected who is extremely popular in the Muslim world, then that president gave a speech that surpassed their wildest hopes, then al-Qaeda announced that it's broke, and now Pakistan has finally, at long last, taken the fight against the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan and its allies to Waziristan itself. Meanwhile, troops and development projects pour into Afghanistan, and public opinion in Pakistan turns against the TTP.

Could this be the beginning of the end?

Captured battle plan shows strength and training of Taleban forces

The map tells a war story of its own. Sketched by a Taleban commander, it is of a stretch of territory fought over in Bajaur between the Pakistani Army and the insurgents. The ground has been neatly divided into specific areas of responsibility for different Taleban units.

Weapons caches, assembly areas and rendezvous points have been carefully marked and coded. This is not the work of a renegade gunman resistant to central authority; it is the assessment of a skilled and experienced fighter, and begins to explain how more than 400 Pakistani soldiers have been killed or wounded since August in Bajaur, the tribal district agency that is said to be the haunt of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Discovered along with the map in a series of recently captured tunnel complexes are other documents - radio frequency lists, guerrilla warfare manuals, students' notes, jihadist propaganda and bombmaking instructions - that provide further evidence of the Taleban's organisation and training. They prove that the Taleban in Bajaur, one of Pakistan's seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), were planning not only to fight, but also to disseminate their fighting knowledge.

“They were training people here,” Colonel Javed Baluch, whose troops seized the village of Tang Khata in an early stage of the autumn fighting, said, as he thumbed through the captured literature. “This was one of their centres. There were students here taking notes on bombmaking and guerrilla warfare. They were well trained and well organised.”

But training whom and to do what? Despite the documentary evidence in Bajaur, the Taleban's ultimate aims - and the nature of their relationship with al-Qaeda - remain contentious issues.

America and Britain claim that the terrorist network and affiliated organisations are being hosted by the Taleban in the tribal areas, which they use as a base for training camps, refuge and recruitment. This, they say, extends the threat from the tribal agencies to the rest of the world.

“If I were going to pick the next attack to hit the United States, it would come out of Fata,” Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently. A Western diplomat in Islamabad claimed last month that among those killed by a Predator drone strike in the tribal area - there have been at least 18 drone attacks there in the past 12 weeks - were members of a terrorist cell planning an attack on Britain.

One eminent Pakistani political figure, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that al-Qaeda and the Taleban had set up a joint headquarters in 2004 as an “Islamic emirate” in North Waziristan, headed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, an Afghan Taleban commander. (His father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the fight against the Soviet Union, was funded by the CIA 30 years ago and was once fêted at the White House by Ronald Reagan.)

“Sirajuddin ... connects the Taleban with al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taleban with the Afghan Taleban,” the source said. “It basically runs the war and has made Fata today the same as Afghanistan was before September 11 - controlled by foreign and local militants who fight a war on both sides of the border.”

Such claims, which have been circulated widely in Pakistan, are denied strongly by the military. Many officers describe the Taleban in Fata as a disparate group of home-grown militants with little vision beyond the affairs of their own district, and claim that al-Qaeda's involvement is negligible.

“There was an al-Qaeda presence here but it didn't include their training bases or headquarters,” Colonel Nauman Saeed, commander of the Frontier Corps garrison in Khar, Bajaur's capital, said. “They [al-Qaeda] were as a pinch of salt in the flour.”

General Tariq Khan, the officer commanding the Bajaur operation, said: “I do not see a coherent stategy in any of these militants. I don't see any Islamic movement of Waziristan or an Islamic emirate ... I think that everyone is in it for himself.”

The Pakistani military claims to have killed more than 1,500 insurgents in Bajaur, and General Khan admits that many foreign fighters - “Uzbeks, Chechens, Turkmen, some Afghans” - have been among them. Of al-Qaeda's top leadership, however, not a trace has been found. “We've hit some Arab leadership there but not of a very high level,” he said.

It could be that the leaders have withdrawn to the two valley strongholds still held by the Taleban in Bajaur, or that they have escaped to Afghanistan or to a neighbouring tribal area.

Or were they ever in Bajaur at all? Shafirullah Khan is the savvy political agent in the area, himself a Pashtun and a long-term veteran of tribal affairs. “At first I would never have believed that al-Zawahiri was here,” he said of the rumours that bin Laden's deputy had been a visitor.

“But now that I have seen those tunnels and hidden shelters, I am not so sure.”

Via the Times.

Pakistanis Mired in Brutal Battle to Oust Taliban

LOE SAM, Pakistan — When Pakistan’s army retook this strategic stronghold from the Taliban last month, it discovered how deeply Islamic militants had encroached on — and literally dug into — Pakistani territory.

Behind mud-walled family compounds in the Bajaur area, a vital corridor to Afghanistan through Pakistan’s tribal belt, Taliban insurgents created a network of tunnels to store arms and move about undetected.

Some tunnels stretched for more than half a mile and were equipped with ventilation systems so that fighters could withstand a long siege. In some places, it took barrages of 500-pound bombs to break the tunnels apart.

“These were not for ordinary battle,” said Gen. Tariq Khan, the commander of the Pakistan Frontier Corps, who led the army’s campaign against the Taliban in the area.

After three months of sometimes fierce fighting, the Pakistani Army controls a small slice of Bajaur. But what was initially portrayed as a paramilitary action to restore order in the area has become the most sustained military campaign by the Pakistani Army against the Taliban and its backers in Al Qaeda since Pakistan allied itself with the United States in 2001.

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to make the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan a top priority. The Bajaur campaign serves as a cautionary tale of the formidable challenge that even a full-scale military effort faces in flushing the Taliban and Al Qaeda from rugged northern Pakistan.

Pakistani officials describe the area as the keystone of an arc of militancy that stretches across the semiautonomous tribal region of Pakistan and into Afghanistan.

Under heavy pressure from the United States, Pakistani officials are vowing to dislodge the Taliban fighters and their Qaeda allies who have taken refuge in the tribal areas.

But a two-day visit to Loe Sam and Khar, the capital of Bajaur, arranged for foreign journalists by the Pakistani military, suggested that Pakistan had underestimated a battle-hardened opponent fighting tenaciously to protect its mountainous stronghold.

Taliban militants remain entrenched in many areas. Even along the road to Loe Sam, which the army laboriously cleared, sniper fire from militants continues.

The Pakistanis have also resorted to scorched-earth tactics to push the Taliban out, an approach that risks pushing more of their own citizens into the Taliban’s embrace.

After the Frontier Corps failed to dislodge the Taliban from Loe Sam in early August, the army sent in 2,400 troops in early September to take on a Taliban force that has drawn militants from across the tribal region, as well as a flow of fighters from Afghanistan.

Like all Pakistani soldiers, the troops sent here had been trained and indoctrinated to fight in conventional warfare against India, considered the nation’s permanent enemy, but had barely been trained in counterinsurgency strategy and tactics.

[More]

More propaganda

"Afghan mayor turns Taliban leader," announces Al Jazeera's top headline. But the man in question had not been mayor since the Taliban came to power, and had defected well over a year ago after being fired from his job as head of Herat's Department of Public Works. This story is not news by any stretch of the imagination, yet Al Jazeera considered it to be more important than the current financial Armageddon the planet is facing. I am apalled at this recent spate of pro-Taliban articles, and am very seriously considering finding somewhere else to get my news.

In other news, Hekmatyar has indicated that he would not be averse to switching sides (something he has a great deal of experience with), and the TTP is saying "uncle." I doubt that anything will come of the first (though I wouldn't put it past him), but it will be interesting to see what, if anything, will come of the second, especially inasmuch as the tribes are concerned.

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.

Pakistan tribes attack Taliban

Tribal volunteers in Pakistan have threatened to destroy the house of Maulvi Omar, a senior Pakistani Taliban spokesman, in the north of the country.

The volunteers surrounded Omar's house on Monday and also said that the homes of other Taliban supporters would be targeted.

The threats are part of a crackdown on the Taliban some tribes people are launching in the Bajaur Agency.

The volunteers' commander says they have 20,000 men ready to carry out the campaign and that they are not asking for any government help.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said that a military operation in Bajaur had made it the scene of heavy fighting and displaced tens of thousands of people from the area.

"[This] caused considerable anger at both the, so called, Taliban in the region for destabilising the region, and the military coming.

"That disillusionment now seems to have turned against the fighters who have been fighting the military."

Hyder said that the locals have been burning the houses of senior commanders who have allied themselves to the Taliban and surrounded the house of Omar.

"There was some desperate attempts by the pro-Taliban elements to try and prevent the destruction of Maulvi Omar's house, but the tribals have said that they will go ahead anyway."

However, Hyder said that Afghan refugees and some Afghan commanders in the area were still attempting to resist the tribal volunteers.

Rocket attack

The attacks came a day after opposition fighters fired rockets at the home of a politician in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan.

Two rockets damaged three homes in the town of Marden on Sunday.

The rockets failed to hit the home of Amir Haider Khan Hoti, the North West Frontier Province's chief minister and the intended target.

No one was injured in the attack. Hoti was said to be in Peshwar, the provincial capital, at the time.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the provincial information minister, said: "We expect more such incidents."

"They are not going to be stopped here. We are facing a war-like situation."

The strike followed a number of attacks targeting politicians in the lawless border area.

A suicide bomber detonated a bomb outside the house of a leading pro-government politician last week, killing four people.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

This is only one example of a number of tribal activities currently underway against the Taliban.

In other news, I have finally found highly detailed maps of the border region, which I am working on integrating into a single very high quality reference map.

'US drone' fires on Pakistan target

A suspected US drone aircraft has left at least eight people dead in northern Pakistan, while dozens of suspected fighters have been killed in the Bajaur region, Pakistani officials say.

The drone aircraft on Friday fired on a house near Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region, leaving another 10 people injured.

North Waziristan, seen by the US as a safehaven for supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, is part of a belt of tribally governed territory where Pakistan's government has little control.

Residents said two missiles were fired at a former government school where suspected fighters and their families were living in Tul Khail village, 5km east of Miran Shah.

Those killed were members of Al Badar, the armed Afghan group of veteran leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, according to an unnamed Pakistani official.

Heykmatyar is an Afghan leader who fought against Soviet occupation in the 1980s and against the Taliban in the 1990s. He reportedly allied with the deposed group after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, demanding the withdrawal of foreign forces.

US tensions

Friday's missile attack brings to five the number of such raids in the past two weeks.

Thirty-eight people, including women and children, have been killed in the past week's missile attacks.

Both the US military and the CIA operate drone aircraft armed with missiles of the type believed to have killed two senior al-Qaeda commanders in Pakistani territory earlier this year. Pakistan says it does not have missile-equipped drones.

Tensions between the US and Pakistan have further risen after a raid last week in which helicopter-borne US commandos landed in Pakistan's South Waziristan - the first known incursion into Pakistan by US troops since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan's military chief, on Wednesday denounced the apparent US raids, saying unilateral actions risked undermining their co-operation.

He warned that "the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country will be defended at all cost. No external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan."

A day later, The New York Times reported that George Bush, the US president, had secretly approved orders in July to allow US special forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government.

Bajaur fighting

Concurrent with the attack in North Waziristan, Major Murad Khan, a Pakistani military spokesman, announced 32 fighters had been killed, as well as two soldiers, over the last day during violence in the Bajur region.

Pakistani officials say hundreds of fighters have been killed there during a week-long offensive, which has forced 500,000 people to flee their homes. Officials acknowledge that civilian have been killed and villages badly damaged in the fighting.

Rehman Malik, the Pakistani interior minister, had previously announced a government ceasefire with fighters in Bajaur and other tribal areas in honour of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

First off, a note on the article itself. As is mentioned, only militants were killed in the raid. Nevertheless, Al Jazeera decided to include a picture of a wounded child, the explanation given being that "Earlier air raids, which have killed and wounded civilians, have angered Pakistanis." This is blatantly biased, the sort of thing I'd expect from FOX, and if it continues I may have to reconsider using Al Jazeera as my primary news source.

As for the raid, ordinarily I would not have objected to it, because if Pakistan wants to claim that it has sovereignty over Waziristan, then it needs to actually exercise that sovereignty. However, it has now begun to do just that. With Pakistan finally taking the threat from TTP seriously, there is no need for us to intervene directly. Doing so, especially against their expressly declared wishes, is foolish.

Apologies on not posting more often. I have my hands full with my Persian lit. class.

Taliban claims Pakistan attack

The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibilty for an assasination attempt on Yousuf Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister.

Shots were fired at the pime minister's motorcade on Wednesday near Islamabad's international airport, but officials and police said Gilani was not in the car at the time.

The Taliban said it was behyind the attack and said it was targeting Gilani because he was responsible for offensives against their fighters in the country's northwest.

"We will continue such attacks on government officials and installations," Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the group, said.

The prime minister's office said multiple sniper shots had been fired at the prime minister's car and television pictures showed two bullet marks a couple of inches apart on the cracked bullet-proof window.

Some reports suggested Gilani's son, Moosa, and Qamar Zaman Kaira, the federal minister for Kashmir and Northern affairs, were in the motorcade at the time, travelling to the airport to pick up the prime minister.

Officials said a formal investigation into the incident had been launched.

In the past, suspected al-Qaeda fighters have launched attacks on Pervez Musharraf - who stepped down as Pakistan's president last month - attacks the former president only narrowly survived.

Via Al Jazeera.

Comment:

It looks like the Taliban has opted for the John McCain approach of victory through force and force alone rather than the Barack Obama approach of victory pursued on all fronts. Had the Taliban just sat back and let Pakistani politics do its thing it would be in pretty good shape, as Khalid Aziz notes:

when the government is near success the old game of using parliament as a prop to defeat the will of the state is brought into play. Any revision of policy at this stage will be a great blow to the government. At the same time Pakistan is in the midst of a severe political crisis. This has occurred due to a breakdown of the coalition at the time of a Presidential election. The tribal areas have 20 electoral votes in this contest. The tribal MNAs and Senators have said that they would like the military activity stopped in Bajaur as a precondition for casting their votes for the PPP candidate. In short the Presidential contest has become a negotiable item in the path of security operations. The JUI (F) which has more than 30 Electoral College votes has categorically asked for a halt to all military operations.

This foolish strike on the Prime Minister's convoy will have the dual effect of hardening him against any compromise and of shoring up public sympathy for him and his party.

Pakistani tribesmen organize private armies to fight Taliban

Pakistan's Taliban might be getting stronger, wreaking havoc along the country's border with Afghanistan, but they are also growing wildly unpopular, inciting their own tribesmen to turn against them.

In the latest of a series of incidents, a lashkar, or private army comprised of Pakistani tribesmen, torched the houses of Taliban commanders in Bajaur, near the Afghan border, vowing to fight them until they are expelled, the Daily Times, a Pakistani newspaper, reports.

Tribesmen in Bajaur Agency's Salarzai tehsil on Sunday formed a private army (lashkar) of around 30,000 people against the local Taliban. A local jirga decided to form the lashkar in the wake of the increasing presence of the local Taliban in the area. The lashkar torched 14 houses, including the house of a local Taliban commander. Tribal elder Malik Munsib Khan, who heads the lashkar, said tribesmen would continue their struggle until the Taliban were expelled from the area, adding that anyone found sheltering Taliban militants would be fined one million [rupees] and his house would be torched. The tribesmen also torched two important centres of the Taliban in the area and gained control of most of the tehsil.

Dawn, another English-language daily in Pakistan, cited the lashkar at a much lower number.

The tribe has raised a lashkar of more than 4,000 volunteers. Malik Munasib Khan, who is leading uprising against the militants, said that the houses destroyed by the volunteers included one of militant leader Naimatullah, who had occupied several government schools and converted them into seminaries.

The development comes in the midst of the Pakistan Army's bombardment campaign, which has been unfolding for weeks in the tribal agency of Bajaur, a militant stronghold where some top commanders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding. The bombardment, which has left some 400 militants dead according to The New York Times, highlights the rising power of the Taliban some seven years after they were first ousted from power in Afghanistan. But it also showcases why the Taliban are highly unpopular: Some 200,000 people have been displaced because of fighting, while dozens of citizens have been killed in clashes between the militants and military.

The Bajaur lashkar might be the largest of its kind, but it is not the only such force to have turned against the Taliban, according to recent reports. The News, a leading Pakistani daily, reported two weeks ago that several such lashkars have arisen throughout the North West Frontier Province, where the Taliban are increasing their hold.

[More]

Comment:

Khalid Aziz, in a blog post linked to from the main article, strongly suspects that political considerations will force the government to end the current campaign, which

will not only letdown the military but all those who have accepted the challenge to fight the militants at the community level. We have seen that while the government adheres to cease fires the militants do not. Under the excuse of cease fire the militants retaliate against those who risked attacking the militants. The government’s ascendancy that now prevails would be lost.

However, this would violate the number one rule of tribal politics: Never kill the elders. Slaughter babies, rape and pillage, but do not harm the elders. Once you do that, you're in deep trouble. Killing elders is what started the Anbar Awakening, and what prompted the elimination of a very large number of Uzbek militants back when this blog was just beginning. When you target tribal elders, you target the tribe, and when you target the tribe, you target a fundamental component of society, a component that, in this part of the world, is very heavily armed.

I do not know how this will play out. The tribes may be instrumental in the Taliban's defeat; they may play no role at all. However, that defeat will never come unless the tribes allow it.

Pakistan halts fighting for Ramadan

Pakistan has announced a suspension of military operations against fighters in the tribal regions during the month of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

But a senior official said on Saturday that security forces would respond if attacked.

Rehman Malik, an interior ministry official, said that security forces would suspend operations from Sunday night for the month of Ramadan, which ends at the beginning of October.

"If militants take any action the security forces will respond with full force," Malik told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore.

"It is not a ceasefire," he stressed, "if they fire a single bullet we will respond with 10 bullets."

Military campaign

Violence has intensified in Pakistan in recent weeks with the military battling armed groups in three different parts of the country's northwest.

Troops backed by helicopter gunships and heavy artillery have for weeks been pounding what they say are pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds in the area, killing more than 560 people, according to officials.

The US says that al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are based in sanctuaries in northwest Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun tribal areas on the Afghan border.

The suspension of military operations comes a day after Pakistan's army said it had killed 40 fighters in an air strike that targeted a rebel stronghold in the country's Swat region.

Deteriorating security in Pakistan has coincided with a faltering economy and political upheaval, with the resignation of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, last week.

That was quickly followed by a split in the ruling coalition.

Via Al Jazeera.

Comment:

Hopefully the Taliban will pause the fighting, but I doubt it.

In other news, I have recently begun a course on cartography, so my eternal dream of having a good map depicting the current situation in Afghanistan at a glance will hopefully become a reality.

Pakistan outlaws TTP

ISLAMABAD (PAN): The government, hours after rejecting a truce offer from militants active in the volatile tribal region near the border with Afghanistan, outlawed on Monday an umbrella insurgent group called Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Speaking to journalists in Islamabad, the advisor to prime minister on interior announced the ban on TTP, formed in December 2007. Rehman Malik, promising punitive action against militant leaders, said bank accounts of the outfit had been frozen.

Activities of the extremist organisation, led by Baitullah Mehsud who has been linked to the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, have touched off a series of military operations in Waziristan, Swat, Bajaur and other regions of the NWFP.

On Sunday, Malik scorned a Taliban offer for a ceasefire in tribal areas and said if the militants were serious about peace talks, they should first surrender their weapons. The TTP had earlier declared a unilateral truce, expressing its willingness to enter dialogue with the government if an ongoing military operation was halted.

In response to the proposal, Malik said: We will not consider it until the Taliban renounced recourse to arms. He went on to reaffirm his resolve to establish the governments writ all over the country. We will not back down from our principled decision.

The ban came soon after the group asserted responsibility for one of the country's worst-ever terrorist attacks that left ten people dead in the restive Swat Valley, the stronghold of firebrand cleric Maulana Fazlullah and a former tourist attraction.

"The TTP is a terrorist organisation which has been killing innocent people, the advisor remarked, accusing the fighters of continuing attacks on security forces, burning schools and damaging public buildings in violation of a much-maligned peace deal.

Anyone aiding the TTP, lending it financial assistance, having other links to it and spreading its night letters or literature would be dealt with according to the law, warned Malik. Under Pakistan's anti-terrorism laws, supporters of insurgents could be jailed for up to 10 years.

But political analysts here blame the governments lenient attitude for the increasing influence of Pakistani Taliban. The proscription should have come about long ago, believes leading commentator Shah Jehan Wagarpal. If Islamabad had taken this action in time, the guerrillas could have been prevented stepping up their activities in Bajaur, Swat and elsewhere.

Senator Raza Muhammad Raza, welcoming the announcement, hoped the government would not shrink from taking practical steps to eliminate the terrorists. In a chat with Pajhwok Afghan News, the nationalist lawmaker said the Taliban were raising anti-US slogans but killing innocent civilians. What kind of jihad it is, he exclaimed.

A day earlier, Co-Chairman of ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Asif Ali Zardari called for an immediate ban on the radical group. He told an English TV channel the Taliban were a headache for the entire world, not Pakistan alone.

Via Pajhwok Afghan News.

Comment:

About time.

Thousands flee Pakistan tribal belt

Around 135,000 residents have fled a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan to escape ongoing clashes between troops and pro-Taliban fighters, officials said.

Half of the population of some villages in the Bajaur tribal district had reportedly moved on Thursday.

There have also been reports that fighters were stopping people from leaving some areas.

"We have around 135,000 people who have left their homes there," said Habibullah Khan, the additional chief secretary for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Rising death toll

"We have directed officials in adjoining districts to provide shelter, food and health care to the migrating families. We are setting up more camps to help these people just like refugees."

More than 460 suspected fighters and 22 army troops, have died since Pakistani forces started military operations in Bajaur a week ago, officials say.

Abdul Rehman Malik, the head of Pakistan's interior ministry, said intelligence sources claim that about 3,000 fighters remain in the northwestern region of Bajaur. He also said they included Pakistanis, Afghans and Central Asians.

Malik also vowed to "wipe out" the fighters.

Witnesses said that thousands of families had arrived in Shabqadar, a small town adjoining the tribal belt. Local residents and welfare groups were raising funds and cooking food for them, they said.

Local residents in the Mammoond area of Bajaur have said that pro-Taliban fighters had banned people from migrating, saying that if they left the area it would be a sign of defeat.

[More]

Comment:

Bajaur is (or at least was) one of the Taliban's principal strongholds in Pakistan.

I'm back from vacation.

No let-up in Pakistan fighting

Fighting in Pakistan's Swat valley has continued into a fourth day between government forces and pro-Taliban fighters in the former popular tourist resort.

Pakistan's military information office said on Saturday that the clashes had so far left 45 pro-Taliban fighters and 11 soldiers dead.

The resurgence of unrest in the mountainous Swat region, 140km from the capital Islamabad, comes despite a May peace deal reached by the fighters with the government.

The current spell of fighting began when pro-Taliban groups abducted 35 Pakistani policemen, apparently responding to the arrest of six fighters, including two commanders, by Pakistan security forces.

Besides soldiers and fighters, 34 civilians have also died and 70 more seriously wounded in the clashes, as shells and mortars hit houses, gardens and even a golf course.

Policemen killed

Police said a bomb exploded at a bridge in Swat valley late on Saturday, killing at least eight police and wounding five others.

The AFP news agency quoted Bashir Khan, a police officer, as saying that the remote-controlled bomb hit a vehicle travelling from the police headquarters in Mingora, the main town in Swat valley, carrying money to pay the salaries of the staff in the nearby town of Kabal.

Khan said the bomb was planted at a bridge between the two towns and that some of the wounded policemen are in serious condition.

At least 12 civilians, including seven members of the same family, were killed on Thursday alone.

Residents said shells hit a house in the Deolai area, killing five children and their parents.

A man was also killed in the crossfire between fighters and security forces at a golf course in the town of Kabal, officials said on Thursday.

The previous day, five soldiers and 25 fighters were killed in a gun battle sparked by an attack on a security checkpoint.

The same day, mortars fired from a Pakistani force helicopters landed on a house.

[snip]

Taliban threat

Even as its intelligence services face accusations of complicity, Pakistan's government forces are battling pro-Taliban groups in the Swat area.

The military has used helicopter gunships to pound Taliban fighter positions, while Taliban fighters have set fire to government buildings.

Two girls' schools were attacked on Thursday night by the fighters, who threatened to expand their onslaught on government-linked installations.

Haji Muslim Khan, the spokesman for one of the largest pro-Taliban groups in the Swat valley, said that the trend would continue throughout Pakistan.

"Who killed the innocent people they are bombing and they are shelling from helicopters? It is the Pakistani army," he told Al Jazeera.

"I don't want America in my country and I don't want our soldiers to work for America and I want the rules and regulations of Islamic sharia.

"Our government are following rules and regulations of America and we want to change it."

The warning follows a statement by Maulana Fazlullah, the Pakistan Taliban's leader in Swat with a four million rupee ($56,000) bounty on his head, that the group has an army of suicide bombers that could strike across the country at any moment.

He told Al Jazeera that the Taliban has the capacity to take control of the entire Swat valley.

Peace deal collapse

The intense fighting has brought the May peace agreement between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban fighters to the brink of collapse.

Under the deal, the Pakistan government agreed to gradually pull out troops and introduce an Islamic justice system.

In exchange, the Taliban said they would halt attacks and surrender arms.

Zahid Hussain, an expert on Pakistani religious groups, told Al Jazeera that the deal was born of failure.

"I think from the beginning it was very clear that it would not work," he said.

"While the deal was signed in May, there has not been a cessation of hostilities, and I think this period only displayed the fighters' capability to further arm and organise themselves."

Al-Qaeda rumour

In other news from the region, US television channel CBS said it had obtained an intercepted letter from a pro-Taliban commander urgently requesting a doctor to treat Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, following an attack in northwest Pakistan last week.

A senior military official based in the area said he was checking the CBS report.

"We have seen the media report that al-Zawahiri was killed or wounded in the July 28 strike. We are investigating the authenticity of the report," the official said.

Major-General Athar Abbas, the chief Pakistani military spokesman, said that the military had no information about the report.

"There is no evidence or information in this regard. We have no reliable information," told the AFP news agency on Saturday.

CBS said the July 29 letter, written by Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban leader, carried his seal and signature, saying Zawahiri was in "severe pain" and his "injuries are infected".

Via Al Jazeera.

Comment:

There is a bit more to the story than this article lets on.

Although Pakistan has made deals with the Tehreek-i-Taliban-i-Pakistan (TTP) in several regions, no such deals exist in the rest. Since no deal existed with the TTP's forces in Hangu, the government launched a campaign to drive them out of that district. The TTP, which, like HAMAS, apparently cannot be bothered to actually read the treaties it signs, claimed that the government was breaking the deal, and issued the provincial government an ultimatum: end the attacks and resign, or all peace deals throughout Pakistan will be null and void and we will take Peshawar. The day before the TTP's deadline elapsed, they kidnapped 25 cops in Swat.¹ This, along with the ultimatum, prompted the government to launch the operation described in Al Jazeera's article.

As for the report of Zawahiri being injured, I very much doubt that it is true. If it was, then the letter requesting a medical assistance would have been sent by whomever Zawahiri is staying with (or near). I have a rather hard time believing that this person would be Beitullah Mehsud, because the Apostasy would have to be insane to keep two people of such importance anywhere near each other. Also, Beitullah Mehsud would presumably already have a skilled medic stationed with him.