Pak Army Faces Four –Front Jihad

Image: North Waziristan, Pakistan: Pakistani Army Patrols Taliban Stronghold On Afghan Border.

• "Of the 56 attacks during 2007, 23 were in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), 21 in the NWFP, including four in the Swat Valley, nine in Punjab, two in Balochistan and one in Sindh. Of the 23 in the FATA, only two were in North Waziristan and one in the Bajaur Agency, where, according to the US, the terrorist infrastructure of Al Qaeda is located. The remaining 20 were in South Waziristan, where there are no confirmed reports of any Al Qaeda infrastructure. All the attacks in South Waziristan came from areas which are controlled by the Mehsuds. In the areas controlled by other tribes, there were no incidents of suicide terrorism. Two cantonments saw repeated suicide strikes--- Rawalpindi (5), where the General Headquarters of the Army are located, and Kohat (3) in the NWFP where a training centre for middle-level army officers is located. " Extract from my article of January 14,2008. titled "Suicide Terrorism In Pakistan--2007"
  
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(January 28, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Pakistan Army has been forced by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) headed by Baitullah Mehsud of South Waziristan to wage a four-front "war"----- against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in South Waziristan, against the Tehrik and the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) in the sensitive Darra Adam Khel---Kohat area of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Shia-dominated Kurram Agency of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),and against the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) headed by Maulana Fazlullah and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) in the Swat Valley of the NWFP.

The fresh wave of fighting in the Kurram Agency, which started on November 15,2007, has since subsided following a peace agreement signed by the leaders of the local Shia and Sunni communities. The Afghan Sunnis living in the area, who had fled into Afghanistan following fierce attacks on them by the Shias, have started returning to their homes. The peace agreement is holding and there have been no reports of any fresh violence for over a week now.

The Army has claimed to have defeated the TNSM, which is helped by the JEM, in the Swat Valley. Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), had also visited the Valley last week to congratulate the army troops and para-military forces, which had participated in the operations. However, reports from reliable police sources say that the forces of Fazlullah and the JEM have dispersed and moved into hill tops, but have not been defeated. Fazlullah and his senior officers have not been captured, but their houses or hide-outs have been blown up by helicopter gunships of the Army. His FM radio station continues to broadcast, but not as regularly as before. While the TNSM and the JEM are no longer fighting pitched battles against the Army and the Frontier Corps as they were doing earlier, they continue to indulge in sporadic guerilla attacks against military vehicles and outposts.

Despite the use of air and artillery strikes and commando actions by three plus platoons of the Special Services Group (SSG) on suspected hide-outs of Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan, his forces, helped by men of IMU, have managed to keep up their attacks on the Army, including the SSG, and the Frontier Corps units. Among the dead bodies so far recovered from the various scenes of the fighting in South Waziristan are those of over a dozen Mehsuds, six Uzbeks, one Tajik and one Uighur. There are no reports of any Arab involvement in the fighting in South Waziristan. Interestingly, Al Qaeda, the IMU and the Neo Taliban have refrained from creating any difficulties for the Pakistan Army in North Waziristan. There has been only one minor incident in North Waziristan. This has enabled the Army to shift some of its forces from North to South Waziristan. Taliban elements have warned that if the Army continues to use its forces in North Waziristan to kill the Mehsuds, they will attack the Army and FC posts in North Waziristan.

The Darra-Adam Khel-Kohat area of the NWFP, which had seen unchecked infiltration by pro-Al Qaeda elements, including the TTP and the LEJ, duruing the last five years when the religious fundamentalist coalition called the Muttahida- Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) was in power in Peshawar, has seen heavy fighting between the Army and the FC on the one side and the TTP and the LEJ on the other. The flare-up started after the TTP and LEJ, acting jointly, seized on January 24,2008, four private trucks transporting arms and ammunition from Peshawar to the Pakistani forces in South Waziristan as they were passing through the Japanese-constructed Kohat Tunnel and captured control of the Tunnel.

There was panic in the Corps and FC headquarters in Peshawar when it was reported that some tribal cadets of the Army Cadet College in the Kohat Cantonment had joined the TTP and the LEJ and helped them in seizing the trucks and capturing control of the Tunnel. Police sources say that like the Rawalpindi Cantonment, the Kohat Cantonment too has been heavily infiltrated by Al Qaeda, Taliban, the LEJ, the JEM and other jihadi elements. These sources also say that during the five years of MMA rule, large areas of the NWFP were heavily infiltrated by Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda elements and they could anytime capture control of the Kohat Cantonment without difficulty.

The seriousness with which the Army viewed the developments in the Darra Adam Khel--Kohat area would be evident from the fact that it rushed 20 tanks to the area to re-capture the Tunnel and the seized trucks. The army has claimed to have re-captured the Tunnel on January 27,2008, but this has been denied by the TTP, which claims that the Tunnel is still under its control.

A report that Mulla Mohammasd Omar, the Amir of the Neo Taliban, has sacked Baitullah Mehsud for fighting against the Pakistan army, which was disseminated by a Pakistani journalist, has not been corroborated. The reports are that Baitullah Mehsud continues to operate under the over-all guidance of Serjuddin Haqqani, son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the Afghan Mujahideen leader of 1980s vintage, who is now reportedly in poor health.

The demands of the TTP and the TNSM continue to be the same, namely, suspension of all military operations in the tribal areas; withdrawal of army posts from the FATA; release of all tribals arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Act; release of Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi and tribal students arrested during the Commando action in the Lal Masjid of Islamabad in July,2007 and enforcement of the Sharia in the tribal areas.

(B. Raman, Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )