By Mushtaq Yusufzai, Irfan Burki and Akhtar Shahzad
Four soldiers were killed and two critically injured when their patrol pickup hit an improvised explosive device (IED) on Jandola-Spinkai Raghzai road in SWA. The Pakistan Army and paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) personnel have been guarding the Jandola-Spinkai Raghzai road in the troubled South Waziristan.
The four slain soldiers were identified as Sepoy Shahid Khan, Raza Mohammad, Naveed Khan and Sharifuddin. Two other soldiers, Subedar Wazir Jan and Sepoy Nawaz Khan, sustained serious injuries in the attack and were shifted to a military hospital. The pickup truck was destroyed, while another was partially damaged in the attack.
The attack on the troops came at a time when a tribal jirga of Mahsud tribal elders and clerics was negotiating between the government and Baitullah Mahsud-led militants in SWA. The jirga after holding talks with Baitullah Mahsud would now meet political agent of the SWA, Shahab Ali Shah, today (Saturday) to inform him about the outcome of their meeting.
Talking to The News from Tank city by telephone, Maulana Esamuddin said Baitullah’s lone demand from the government was withdrawal of the army from Spinkai Raghzai area of the SWA.
Esamuddin, who has been nominated as jirga leader after Senator Saleh Shah left for Islamabad to attend the Senate session, said their first priority would be to convince the two warring sides for a ceasefire so that the jirga members could work for bridging the gap between the government and Baitullah Mahsud.
It merits a mention here that it was Maulana Esamuddin who went to the distant hideout of Baitullah Mahsud along with other clerics and persuaded him to release 45 students and two teachers of Razmak Cadet College on Thursday without any condition.
In another incident, a solider died and two others were injured when an IED planted by suspected militants went off near Angoor Adda — a border town between South Waziristan and Afghanistan’s Paktika province. There were reports that a bomb disposal squad was defusing the IED when it exploded.
The area is inhabited by the Ahmadzai Wazir tribes who had signed a peace accord with the government in 2007, and pledged not to attack the security forces and government installations in their territory.
Recently, when relations between the government and Maulvi Nazeer, the commander of Ahmadzai Wazir Taliban who was previously known as pro-government, turned sour violence again returned to the region.
However, the Ahmadzai tribal elders and ulema soon felt that developing differences with the government at a time when their main fruit and vegetables were ready to be shifted to market would not be in their favour.
The elders realised the losses they could suffer in case of fighting against the well-equipped security forces and immediately sent a jirga to the government that restored their previous peace accord.
Such type of terrorist attacks on security forces and government installations in the Ahmadzai Wazirs’ inhabited areas could, however, once again make ties between the two sides bitter in which the Ahmadzais could suffer losses as it would make their job harder in finding market for their fruit and vegetables. There were also reports that continuous closure of the Tank-Wana road had irritated the Ahmadzai Wazirs and forced them to resort to violence.
Presently, the Ahmadzai Wazirs have to travel to the distant Zhob district in Balochistan via dirt road for reaching Dera Ismail Khan and rest of the areas that consumes their time and money.