Posts
As Pakistani troops battled on Monday for control of the small South Waziristan town of Kotkai, the hometown of the Pakistani Taliban's two top leaders, suicide bombers walked into the heart of the University of Islamabad and blew themselves up, killing seven people and wounding 26 others.
Within hours, Qari Hussain, the man responsible for recruiting and training the Taliban's suicide bombers, laid claim to the attack in a telephone call to the BBC and said his organization now considers all Pakistan to be a war zone.
Four days into the main military offensive of Operation Rah-e-Nijat (the Path to Salvation) and Pakistan is bracing for more bloodshed. There is a clear possibility the country could plunge into civil war.
Yesterday's near-simultaneous bombings outside a packed women's cafeteria and at the Islamic law faculty were the seventh major terrorist attack in Pakistan in just two weeks.
Recent suicide bombings in Peshawar, Shangla, Kohat and Islamabad, combined with full-blown military assaults on police targets in Lahore and Peshawar and the Pakistan Army's general headquarters in Rawalpindi, have dramatically picked up the pace of a terror campaign that appears increasingly to be co-ordinated between the Pakistani Taliban and Punjabi Islamist insurgents with links to al-Qaeda.
Rather than restricting their activities to the troubled tribal areas or to slinking across the border into Afghanistan, the Taliban are threatening to spread their fight into the heart of Pakistan.
Hours after yesterday's bombings, the southern province of Sindh closed all private and public schools for a week out of fear of further Taliban attacks.
Islamist terrorism has broken out of its boundaries in the tribal belt and become a national threat. Rather than staying to fight a full-blown war with the army in the hills and gullies of South Waziristan, Hakimullah Mehsud, head of Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP, the Pakistani Taliban), appears to have adopted a strategy of spreading chaos.
A guerrilla leader who sprang to prominence leading attacks on NATO's Afghan supply convoys in the Khyber Pass, he is now threatening to step up attacks on government services across Pakistan.
If the core of the TTP's leadership is not crushed quickly during the current military offensive, there will likely be a rash of suicide bombings, insurgent attacks and car bombings all over Pakistan.
Karachi, the country's commercial capital and home to nearly three million Pashtun tribesmen, could easily become a major terrorist target, the site of a bloody and brutal urban battle like post-war Baghdad.
The Pakistani Taliban have already shown signs they have learned the deadly trade secrets al-Qaeda employed so effectively in the Iraq insurgency. They are expanding their use of sophisticated explosives and suicide bombers with the intention of inflicting massive civilian casualties.
A stepped-up terror campaign will seek to drive a wedge between Pakistan's military and the fledgling and fractious civilian government.
It would also aim to sap public support for continuing to fight in the tribal belt.
The South Waziristan offensive is the military's fourth attempt since 2001 to crush rebels in the tribal areas. Three earlier operations bogged down in bloody fighting and ended with the government signing peace deals that ultimately allowed the Taliban to regroup, even expand their influence.
It is obvious the army has no intention of fighting a prolonged battle in South Waziristan. The 30,000 troops committed to Operation Rah-e-Nijat are nowhere near the 370,000 to 430,000 soldiers the New America Foundation says would be needed to hold the tribal areas and meet the minimum force-to-population ratios prescribed by traditional counter-insurgency doctrine.
By focusing its assault on the portion of South Waziristan occupied by the Mehsud clan, the military has already cut a non-aggression pact with other Pashtun tribal leaders who continue to send insurgents into Afghanistan to fight NATO troops.
Pakistan is only interested in crushing those elements of the Taliban that pose a direct domestic threat. The army in South Waziristan has agreed not to bother two rival Wazir tribal leaders, Maulvi Nazir and Gul Bahadur, in exchange for being allowed to move freely through their districts in North Waziristan.
That's bound to infuriate the United States and NATO countries who have been pressuring Islamabad to crack down on all Taliban who are destabilizing Afghanistan.
But Pakistan's generals, the original patrons of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are reluctant to renounce the group entirely.
They fear the United States and the West may suddenly abandon the region before Afghanistan is stabilized and want to retain enough influence with the Taliban to have a say in any final settlement.
"There is always a strategy to isolate your main target," Major General Athar Abbas, Pakistan's chief military spokesman, said yesterday as he described Pakistan's understanding with elements of the Taliban in North Waziristan.
"Sometimes we have to talk to the devil in this regard."
National Post
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
Within hours, Qari Hussain, the man responsible for recruiting and training the Taliban's suicide bombers, laid claim to the attack in a telephone call to the BBC and said his organization now considers all Pakistan to be a war zone.
Four days into the main military offensive of Operation Rah-e-Nijat (the Path to Salvation) and Pakistan is bracing for more bloodshed. There is a clear possibility the country could plunge into civil war.
Yesterday's near-simultaneous bombings outside a packed women's cafeteria and at the Islamic law faculty were the seventh major terrorist attack in Pakistan in just two weeks.
Recent suicide bombings in Peshawar, Shangla, Kohat and Islamabad, combined with full-blown military assaults on police targets in Lahore and Peshawar and the Pakistan Army's general headquarters in Rawalpindi, have dramatically picked up the pace of a terror campaign that appears increasingly to be co-ordinated between the Pakistani Taliban and Punjabi Islamist insurgents with links to al-Qaeda.
Rather than restricting their activities to the troubled tribal areas or to slinking across the border into Afghanistan, the Taliban are threatening to spread their fight into the heart of Pakistan.
Hours after yesterday's bombings, the southern province of Sindh closed all private and public schools for a week out of fear of further Taliban attacks.
Islamist terrorism has broken out of its boundaries in the tribal belt and become a national threat. Rather than staying to fight a full-blown war with the army in the hills and gullies of South Waziristan, Hakimullah Mehsud, head of Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP, the Pakistani Taliban), appears to have adopted a strategy of spreading chaos.
A guerrilla leader who sprang to prominence leading attacks on NATO's Afghan supply convoys in the Khyber Pass, he is now threatening to step up attacks on government services across Pakistan.
If the core of the TTP's leadership is not crushed quickly during the current military offensive, there will likely be a rash of suicide bombings, insurgent attacks and car bombings all over Pakistan.
Karachi, the country's commercial capital and home to nearly three million Pashtun tribesmen, could easily become a major terrorist target, the site of a bloody and brutal urban battle like post-war Baghdad.
The Pakistani Taliban have already shown signs they have learned the deadly trade secrets al-Qaeda employed so effectively in the Iraq insurgency. They are expanding their use of sophisticated explosives and suicide bombers with the intention of inflicting massive civilian casualties.
A stepped-up terror campaign will seek to drive a wedge between Pakistan's military and the fledgling and fractious civilian government.
It would also aim to sap public support for continuing to fight in the tribal belt.
The South Waziristan offensive is the military's fourth attempt since 2001 to crush rebels in the tribal areas. Three earlier operations bogged down in bloody fighting and ended with the government signing peace deals that ultimately allowed the Taliban to regroup, even expand their influence.
It is obvious the army has no intention of fighting a prolonged battle in South Waziristan. The 30,000 troops committed to Operation Rah-e-Nijat are nowhere near the 370,000 to 430,000 soldiers the New America Foundation says would be needed to hold the tribal areas and meet the minimum force-to-population ratios prescribed by traditional counter-insurgency doctrine.
By focusing its assault on the portion of South Waziristan occupied by the Mehsud clan, the military has already cut a non-aggression pact with other Pashtun tribal leaders who continue to send insurgents into Afghanistan to fight NATO troops.
Pakistan is only interested in crushing those elements of the Taliban that pose a direct domestic threat. The army in South Waziristan has agreed not to bother two rival Wazir tribal leaders, Maulvi Nazir and Gul Bahadur, in exchange for being allowed to move freely through their districts in North Waziristan.
That's bound to infuriate the United States and NATO countries who have been pressuring Islamabad to crack down on all Taliban who are destabilizing Afghanistan.
But Pakistan's generals, the original patrons of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are reluctant to renounce the group entirely.
They fear the United States and the West may suddenly abandon the region before Afghanistan is stabilized and want to retain enough influence with the Taliban to have a say in any final settlement.
"There is always a strategy to isolate your main target," Major General Athar Abbas, Pakistan's chief military spokesman, said yesterday as he described Pakistan's understanding with elements of the Taliban in North Waziristan.
"Sometimes we have to talk to the devil in this regard."
National Post
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
No comments:
Post a Comment