On October 17, the Pakistan army launched its offensive in
South Waziristan. Code named "Rah-i-Rast" (the path of righteousness), it
was advertised by the army establishment as a death blow against the
Taliban whose suicide bombers have left thousands dead across Pakistan.
But dazed citizens are asking: will this operation really succeed in
stopping the daily carnage?
Some attacks are more spectacular than others. But even
the outstanding ones are forgotten once the next one happens. This week a
car bomber left well over a hundred dead, mostly women and children, at
Peshawar’s crowded Meena Bazaar. Last week educational institutions across
Pakistan were shut down after a suicide bomber blew himself up after
walking into the girls’ cafeteria of the International Islamic University.
Simultaneously, another one targeted male students in a different part of
the campus.
At this time the country was still reeling from the triple
whammy which had hit Lahore, devastating the Elite Police Academy, the
Federal Investigation Agency building and the Manawan Police Academy.
Dozens were killed. As the guns were firing in Lahore, a suicide bomber
blew up his explosives-laden van outside a police station in Kohat, about
300 miles away, while another blew up schoolchildren in the same city on
the same day.
Days earlier the headlines had been dominated by Taliban
militants who had stormed the apparently impregnable General Headquarters
(GHQ) of the Pakistan army in Rawalpindi, Islamabad’s sister city. The
20-hour siege, followed diligently by private television channels, left
eight insurgents, eight soldiers and three hostages killed. The meticulous
planning, culminating in hostage-taking and killing, bore eerie
resemblance to the Mumbai attacks. The message was clear: no place in
Pakistan is safe any more.
Just a couple of months ago Pakistanis had heaved a sigh
of relief. A brief lull in terrorist attacks had followed the army’s
successful operation against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Swat
and the killing by an American drone of TTP’s supremo, Baitullah Mehsud.
Some hubris-filled "analysts" – who ceaselessly chatter on Pakistan’s
numerous private television channels – claimed that the TTP had been
mortally wounded. But they were dead wrong.
Why the upsurge? The answer is twofold. First, the new TTP
head, Hakimullah Mehsud, needed to prove his effectiveness and wanted to
dispel speculations that infighting for Baitullah’s successor had rendered
the TTP ineffective. More importantly, the TTP tried its best to prevent
South Waziristan, sometimes called the "Taliban GHQ", from being attacked
by the army. In this they did not succeed: South Waziristan, after Swat,
has become the next battleground. So far, by army accounts, the fight is
going well. But past experience shows just how difficult it is going to
be. This calls for a brief recapitulation.
In 2002, on Washington’s insistence, the Pakistan army had
established military bases in South Waziristan. This rugged area had
become a refuge for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan from
America’s post-9/11 attack. Combat soon followed, with the Pakistan army
making extensive use of artillery and US-supplied Cobra gunships. But the
Pakistani state was ultimately expelled from this ferociously conservative
area. An Islamic emirate, governed by particularly regressive
interpretations of religious law, took its place.
By 2005 Taliban influence had spread from South to North
Waziristan. Even though soldiers rarely ventured out from guard posts and
heavy fortifications, the army was taking losses whose extent has never
been revealed. The senior army leadership officially ascribed the
resistance to "a few hundred foreign militants and terrorists". But morale
continued to sink, with junior army men wondering why they were being
asked to attack their ideological comrades – the Taliban. Reportedly,
local clerics refused to conduct funeral prayers for soldiers killed in
action.
The half-hearted war failed, leading to the signing of a
"peace treaty" on September 5, 2006 in the North Waziristan town of
Miranshah – which was by now firmly in the grip of the Pakistani Taliban.
Army officers, and the militants they had fought for four years, hugged
each other while heavily armed Taliban stood guard. Although the military
governor of the province, Lt Gen Ali Mohammad Aurakzai, praised the peace
agreement as "unprecedented in tribal history", in fact it was reminiscent
of the earlier, Shakai agreement in South Waziristan, which too had ended
up making the militants stronger.
The Miranshah treaty met all demands made by the jihadists:
the release of all jailed militants, dismantling of army checkpoints,
return of seized weapons and vehicles, the right of the Taliban to display
weapons (except heavy ones), and residence rights for fellow fighters from
other Islamic countries. As for "foreign militants" – who General
Musharraf had blamed exclusively for the resistance, the militants were
nonchalant: we will let you know if we find any! The financial
compensation demanded by the Taliban for loss of property and life has not
been revealed but some officials remarked that it was "astronomical". In
turn, the jihadists promised to cease their attacks on civil and military
installations and give the army a safe passage out. The army had
surrendered.
Today is a more experienced and better equipped Pakistan
army capable of repeating Swat in South Waziristan? Or will it be bogged
down in an endless counter-insurgency on a terrain that is ideal for
insurgents? Will reverses then lead to face-saving treaties such as those
in Shakai and Miranshah?
The stakes today are much higher than in 2006. Military
victory will not be easy, especially since the militants have had years to
dig tunnels, hide weapons and store supplies in the mountains. But let us
suppose that the army succeeds in destroying the terrorist infrastructure.
What then?
Success must be defined more meaningfully this time: the
army must demonstrate the ability to hold on to the territory long enough
to establish functioning state institutions in Waziristan and, more
generally, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The FATA
must be fully absorbed into Pakistan and its British-era special status
must be revoked. After this, there will be a still greater challenge:
creating an economy in a place where there is nothing beyond subsistence
farming and where the major income derives from arms, drugs, smuggling,
kidnapping and carjacking.
South Waziristan will certainly not be the last
battlefield and a victory here will not end terrorism. This is a war of
necessity, not of choice. A defeat or stalemate here will embolden the
fanatics in South Punjab, including Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.
The cancer of religious militancy has spread across Pakistan.
In the long run, fighting religious extremism effectively
will be impossible until there is a clear perception in the Pakistani
public as well as the army that the Taliban threaten the existence of
Pakistan and its ability to function as a state. Although public opinion
moved behind the army after the Taliban flouted the Swat agreement,
Pakistanis are still far from unanimous on the nature of the threat. A
predisposition towards conspiracy theories results in terrorist acts being
blamed on "foreign elements". This usually means the United States and
India (in that order) but has come to include Kabul more and more.
Overcoming the scourge of Talibanisation and religious
terrorism will ultimately require that Pakistan joins hands with those
that it does not trust today. This includes Iran. Although Pakistan has
been amazingly contrite, Iran is still furious with Pakistan after 42
people, including senior commanders from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards
Corps (IRGC), were killed by the Pakistan-based Jundullah jihadist group
on October 18.
Mind-sets created over decades do not change easily. A
majority of Pakistanis still believe that India poses a greater threat
than the Taliban. But there are welcome signs of a shift towards sanity.
India can help discreetly by keeping its rhetoric down as well as by
giving repeated assurances that a secure Pakistan is in India’s interest.
Indeed for India nothing can be worse than a Pakistan splintered into a
hundred jihadist groups, each with its own agenda and tactics, as they
execute their holy wars on both sides of the border.