Coming next week: An Asia Times
Online series on the situation in Pakistan's tribal
areas, featuring exclusive material and video
clips. Syed
Saleem Shahzad
sets the scene.
Turncoats and
terror in Pakistan's tribal areas
KARACHI - An alliance of six religious parties,
the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), won unprecedented
election victories just under two years ago in the
Pakistani tribal areas, as well as in North West
Frontier Province and Balochistan, contesting on a
pro-Taliban platform.
However, when the
Pakistani army, under US pressure, began (unsuccessful)
operations in the South Waziristan tribal area this year to
root out foreign and Afghan resistance elements
sheltering there, the MMA opted for a mediatory role.
And now, with a further large operation likely
to begin soon, the MMA has gone a step further by
completely backing the government's efforts.
Because of the sensitive nature of the army's
presence in the tribal areas, where it is widely
despised, and also that the army was given a bloody nose
last time out, Islamabad has clamped down on news from
the area.
However, Asia Times Online contacts in
South Waziristan confirm that fresh skirmishes - the
third this year - have already begun, once again under
US pressure, and the Pakistani army has taken up
positions for a big offensive. Militants, meanwhile,
disregarding the MMA, have also dug in. According to the
contacts, the latest bout of fighting began on Tuesday
near Wana, the main town in South Waziristan. An army
spokesperson confirmed heavy attacks on army positions,
but said they had been repulsed, and made no mention of
casualty figures, although they are believed to have
been heavy on both sides.
The MMA
leadership recently met with newly installed Pakistani
Prime Minister Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain, at which
time the director general of internal security of
the Inter-Services Intelligence, Major-General Shafi Zaki,
gave a briefing on the presence of foreign fighters in
the country and the inevitability of a new operation in
the tribal areas. The MMA expressed complete harmony
with the government, and agreed that foreigners should
surrender to the authorities and get themselves
registered if they wanted to remain.
This is all
well and good in the rarefied confines of the corridors
of power in Islamabad, but the ground realities in the
rugged mountains of the tribal areas are a different
matter.
Call of the mountains Foreign
fighters and local Wazir tribals have established
themselves in a belt stretching from North Waziristan to
South Waziristan and into the remote Shawal area in
Afghanistan, a veritable no-man's land that now serves
as the base for the Afghan resistance movement.
President General Pervez Musharraf is right,
therefore, to say that the Pakistani tribal areas have
become a base camp for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, "from
where they have spun a web of terror from Kabul to
Karachi".
When the Taliban and al-Qaeda
retreated from Afghanistan in late 2001 in the face of
the US-led assault on the country, without much of a
fight, the move surprised many people. Strategic experts
then argued that the Taliban withdrawal was a prelude to
a guerrilla war, up to the point that they could start an
organized war against US-led forces in Afghanistan.
The present situation in the
Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal area bears testimony to this
theory - and the war has only just begun, in North and
South Waziristan, and parts of Afghanistan, where the
Taliban have taken control of many districts around
Zabul and Kandahar, with the US-sponsored Afghan
administration unable to take them back. Even the US
base in Kandahar came under attack recently, and
according to a spokesperson of the Afghan government,
several US soldiers lost their lives.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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policies.)
Coming next week: An Asia Times
Online series on the situation in Pakistan's tribal
areas, featuring exclusive material and video
clips. Syed
Saleem Shahzad
sets the scene.
