By Rahimullah Yusufzai
Pakistan's armed forces started the air and ground offensive after months of preparations, during which the areas inhabited by the Mahsud tribe and controlled by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were blocked from all sides and artillery shelling and air strikes using jet-fighters and helicopter- gunships were carried out to "soften" Taliban positions.
In fact, bombing of the militants' strongholds had begun a few months ago and there were reports the pilots had bombed almost all known targets depending on the inadequate intelligence available with the military. South Waziristan, or precisely the Mahsud territory, was a "black hole," in the words of a senior military commander, due to the fact that the government didn't have any intelligence assets in this area. Most of the intelligence information, subjective and often unreliable, came from militants and tribesmen opposed to the late Baitullah Mahsud's TTP and loyal to the dissident commanders Turkestan Bhittani and Misbahuddin Mahsud, brother of slain militant commander Qari Zainuddin and cousin of the late Abdullah Mahsud, once a comrade of Baitullah.
There were occasions when the government and the military suffered embarrassment by depending too much on the dissidents' account of events, including the false claim that the new TTP head Hakimullah Mahsud was killed and his supposed rival Waliur Rahman injured during a clash between their supporters in a meeting convened to appoint a successor to Baitullah following his death in a US drone attack on the night of Aug 5. Hakimullah and Waliur Rahman waited for a few weeks to let ministers and civil and military bureaucrats repeat those claims before meeting a group of journalists in their lair in Srarogha in South Waziristan and photographed to show they were not only alive but also united.
The military authorities have been quoted as saying that six to eight weeks would be required to complete the ongoing action in South Waziristan. If this doesn't happen, the military operation would be judged in the light of this timeline and termed a failure or half-victory. In Swat the deadlines for accomplishing victory had already proved unachievable.
As was the case before the military operation in Swat and the rest of Malakand Division, the military leadership again received political support just a day before the attack in South Waziristan. Among the parties backing the government policy and the army action was Maulana Fazlur Rahman's JUI-F that is sometimes critical of the military option and even now is offering its services to initiate talks with the TTP. Army chief Gen Parvez Ashfaq Kayani and ISI head Lt Gen Shuja Pasha were there to brief the politicians on the security situation. Only the Jamaat-e-Islami and Imran Khan's Tehrik-e-Insaf are opposed to the policy and both are unrepresented in the Parliament after having boycotted the last general elections.
The media too is already on board. It fully backed the military action in the Malakand region, built up public opinion against the Swat Taliban, motivated people to help the internally displaced persons and even restrained itself while covering stories about extrajudicial killings and use of excessive force in Swat and elsewhere in the area. The media is again at the beck and call of the military as it tackles the Taliban militants who are carrying out bombings in public places and mercilessly killing innocent civilians.
For a while during 2004-2006, the Pakistani Taliban enjoyed support among religious-minded Pakistanis for sending fighters to Afghanistan to fight the US-led coalition forces and giving refuge to members of Al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Also, there was this feeling that Pakistan was fighting America's war and that the US drone attacks, bombings by Pakistani warplanes and other tough tactics used against the fiercely independent Pakhtun tribes inhabiting the tribal areas had turned the population against the government and the military and thrown them into the lap of the militants.
Though anti-US sentiment is strong as ever and some of the concerns remain valid, more and more people in the NWFP and the tribal areas have turned against the militants for having destroyed the peace of their towns and villages and for depriving them of the peace of their minds. The militants have lost whatever little public sympathy they had, because of their tactics of imposing their will on the hapless population in areas controlled by them, eliminating opponents, fighting the Pakistani state and its security and law-enforcement forces, carrying out suicide bombings and beheadings, and kidnapping people for ransom.
The recent wave of terrorist attacks including spectacular raids on the Army's headquarters in Rawalpindi and police installations in Lahore, Peshawar and Kohat, which killed more than 175 people forced the military's hand to expedite plans to storm the militants' strongholds in South Waziristan. The approaching winter also prompted the military to begin the onslaught and try to finish it or achieve most of its objectives before the snow starts falling in the mountains of Makeen, Ladha, Kaniguram, Badar, Srarogha, Kotki and other militant strongholds.
The military action is confined to parts of South Waziristan that are populated by the Mahsud tribe and have no border with Afghanistan. The 30,000 or so troops advancing into the heart of Mahsud territory have marched from three sides--i.e., from Razmak in North Waziristan towards Makeen in South Waziristan, from Wana and Shakai towards Serwakai tehsil on the way to Kaniguram and from Jandola to Spinkai Raghzai, Kotki and Srarogha.
In fact, the military commanders should be familiar with the terrain as these were the routes taken during the previous three inconclusive, or, rather, failed, military operations against Baitullah's men from 2005 to 2008. Failure to defeat the TTP commander and the capture of up to 300 soldiers by his fighters forced the government and the military to make peace deals with him in February 2005 and also subsequently.
In the first few days of the fighting, the military is claiming to have killed more than 60 militants and occupied some strategic mountain heights near Razmak. It is conceding the loss of 11 soldiers, which is fairly high and explains the tenacity of the tribal militants and their foreign guest fighters belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and, possibly, Al-Qaeda. There have been few reports, and that too in the Western media, that some Al-Qaeda militants and even Osama bin Laden could be present in South Waziristan. It appears that they would be disappointed once the battle is over because there has never been any sighting of bin Laden or his deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Waziristan or anywhere else in Pakistan or Afghanistan. TTP spokesman Azam Tariq has admitted the loss of only one Taliban fighter and claimed inflicting losses on the army troops trying to move into Mahsud areas from three sides.
There is no way to independently verify these claims, but military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas has conceded that the troops' advance has been slow due to stiff resistance and landmines. The battle would take a familiar course with both sides claiming battlefield achievements as was the case in Swat until the militants start losing territory and men and withdraw to their mountain fastnesses, retreat to remote places such as the Shawal valley in North Waziristan or scatter to other places in the tribal areas such as the Orakzai, Kurram, Khyber tribal agencies to survive and regroup.
It is certainly going to be a lot harder and longer than the battle for Swat. There will be more fighting and casualties, the displaced people already nearing 200,000 will need immediate and long-term help, and those stranded in their villages will have to be protected and supplied food and medicines if the idea is to isolate the militants and deprive them of support. People displaced in the past from South and North Waziristan, Kurram, Orakzai, Khyber, Bajaur, Mohmand, Darra Adamkhel and other tribal areas have been complaining, with justification, that they weren't given the kind of support provided to the IDPs from Swat and Malakand. Their grievances should be removed and those getting displaced now also must be looked after because no military action could succeed if it doesn't enjoy public support.
The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahim yusufzai@yahoo.com