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Friday March 29, 2024

Pakistan has won war against terror, says UK paper

By Monitoring Desk
March 04, 2017

LONDON: It is nothing short of a miracle that Pakistan survived after so many atrocities and disasters, this a is a story of optimism, of how the men of terror can be taken on and defeated, writes Peter Oborne for British newspaper — Daily Mail. 

For more than a decade, the Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan has been the deadly epicentre of global terror. This mountainous area on the remote Afghan border was the secure base from which Taliban and Al Qaeda warlords launched attacks across the world. Many have been aimed at Britain.

For example, it was from here that Rashid Rauf (the Al Qaeda terrorist who at the time was described as ‘one of the world’s most wanted’) masterminded the 7/7 London bombings in 2005 which killed 52 and injured more than 770 people.

Rauf — born in Pakistan but radicalised by a sect in Birmingham in his late teens after moving to Britain in the early Eighties — was also suspected of being the ringleader of a foiled plot to detonate liquid explosives on a transatlantic plane in 2006, which a senior British policeman said would have caused ‘mass murder on an unimaginable scale’.

“This week, I was the first Western journalist in many years to travel to the North Waziristan capital, Miranshah,” writes Peter Oborne.  Until recently, it was from these streets that Taliban commanders ordered public beheadings and Al Qaeda chiefs groomed innocent children as young as ten to be suicide bombers. 

It seemed unimaginable back then that Al Qaeda and the Taliban would be driven out of Pakistan’s tribal territories. Yet the Pakistan army now claims that every last Taliban fighter has been expelled.

It is nothing short of miraculous that Pakistan survived after so many atrocities and disasters. This, then, is a story of optimism; of how the men of terror can be taken on and defeated. After a sustained assault, Pakistani troops managed to take control of Miranshah. The terrorists fled — but left a scene of heartbreaking devastation.

After protracted battles, the Pakistan military finally managed to clear the region of its last terrorist stronghold. But not before the Taliban had launched numerous reprisal attacks inside Pakistan itself, engulfing the country in a bloody civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives.

The writers says, “My guide, Major General Hassan Azhar Hayat, is understandably triumphant. He claims that the destruction of the city was a price that had to be paid as the only way of driving out the terror chiefs who he says had held the citizens of Miranshah hostage.” 

Now, local people who had been forced to flee are returning to their homes.  Gen Hassan, who commands Pakistan’s 7th Division on the north-west frontier, drove the writer through the ruins to visit the site of a former Taliban bomb factory in a Miranshah suburb. 

Cynically, Taliban warlords had located it in the middle of a densely populated area, in the belief that the military would never attack for fear of causing massive loss of civilian life. We found ourselves in what was once a sophisticated complex. The terror chiefs had left behind large containers for glycerin, ammonium nitrate, manganese and nitric powder as well as machines to convert these raw materials into bombs.

Jihadist literature that was found at the site revealed that the factory was run by the Afghan Islamic Emirate — popularly known as the Afghan Taliban. There was still much evidence of the bomb-makers: at the entrance were gas masks and rubber gloves to protect them. In a bizarre touch that belied the deadly nature of this bomb factory, the living quarters were decorated with murals depicting rivers, orchards and idyllic scenes from the countryside.

This was one of a number which had been discovered in the two-year operation to recover North Waziristan from terrorist control. In total, the army found 310 tons of explosives, 25,000 rifles and more than two million bullets.

The military also uncovered a terrorist infrastructure that included a media centre hidden in the basement of a mosque, secret prisons where kidnap victims were held, and deep tunnels to protect fighters from precision bombs. Gen Hassan described it as the terrorists’ version of the Pentagon in America.

There was also a military college — the Taliban equivalent to Britain’s Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst — where fighters were trained. The Pakistan Army is now convinced that after 15 years of pure horror it has won the war on terror in Pakistan’s tribal areas. 

Statistics now show that terrorist violence in Pakistan has fallen by three quarters in the past two years. Gen Hassan told the writer: ‘We feel there is no threat now. We’ve operated against terrorists of all colours and creeds here. There are no no-go areas any more.’

The truth would seem to be that the terrorists have either been killed or have fled across the border into Afghanistan, where, sadly, they have regrouped to launch assaults against Pakistan border positions. There had been seven attacks in the ten days before my visit.

To counter the threat, the Pakistan army has built more than 1,000 border posts to prevent terrorists crossing back into the country. And there have still been terrible atrocities, such as a recent attack on the shrine of Sufi Saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan Sharif which killed 88 and left many horribly injured.

Yet, overall, the progress against the terror cells has been remarkable. At the height of the attacks from North Waziristan three years ago, Pakistan’s commercial capital of Karachi was ranked the sixth most dangerous city in the world. Now, violence has fallen so sharply it ranks 32nd. Admittedly, the costs of this war have been horrifying. More than 4,000 Pakistan soldiers died in a conflict. Fighting the terrorists has cost the country tens of billions of pounds, and has had devastating consequences on the nation’s people.

At one point, terrorists controlled territories less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad. There were even fears that the Taliban might seize control of Pakistan’s nuclear warheads. As ever in the world of terrorism, there is a wider context to these local issues.

Speaking privately, Pakistan military strategists blame Tony Blair’s misguided decision to invade Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003 as the trigger for their country’s descent into horror.

One general told the writer that the West’s war against Saddam distracted world leaders from the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda at a crucial moment, allowing terrorists to regroup in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

With passion, he told the writer: ‘One day, Mr Blair will be tried as a war criminal.’ Meanwhile, officially, the Pakistan military says the task today is no longer to defeat the Taliban in battle but to rebuild the city of Miranshah. Originally, the area developed after a key fort was built here by the British in 1905 to control North Waziristan and it was said that ‘there could have been no place more dangerous in the whole of the British Empire’.

The Pakistani authorities are busy building schools, hospitals and a market to replace the one destroyed in the fighting. In effect, this means the construction of an entire new city. This is the indomitable spirit that gives the world hope that Pakistan has escaped from an age of unspeakable bloodshed and that the men of terror can be defeated.