Pakistan in Media

The News International, Pakistan, Monday, July 06, 2009
According to media accounts, some 40,000 people have already been displaced from North and South Waziristan – in anticipation of a full scale operation there. Indeed, this process adds to the displacements that have been taking place from the area since 2002, when the military first entered it.

A fresh influx of IDPs from Waziristan would greatly add to the problems already being faced at IDP camps. Despite improved facilities at them, the situation of IDPs at them remains bleak. There is a lack of sanitation, of proper housing and of sufficient medications. A senior WHO official has warned this could lead to a major crisis in the weeks ahead, especially as the monsoon hits adding to the risk of all kinds of disease. We need to think ahead. If mass displacements do indeed take place in Waziristan, provisions need to be made for people coming down. Further on, we must also consider the future of Waziristan and ponder what can be done to bring it back to normalcy.
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The News International, Wednesday, July 01, 2009
The military and the government have suffered a setback in North Waziristan. How severe this is, only time will tell. The tribals with whom a peace deal was reached early in 2008 have decided at a 'jirga' to abandon it. The 'tame Taliban' have in other words proved they are not fully on the leash after all, and are capable of pulling away at any minute. They have now demanded an end to drone attacks and an army pull-out from North Waziristan if the terms of the accord are to be honoured. Meanwhile 30 have died in an attack on a military convoy.
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Dawn, Pakistan, Wednesday, 24 Jun, 2009
QARI Zainuddin, a militant commander and rival of Baitullah Mehsud, has been assassinated by his bodyguard in Medina Colony in D.I. Khan. According to Qari Misbahuddin, the younger brother of Qari Zainuddin, the guard, Gulbuddin Mehsud, had been working with the family for six years and was one of the most trusted employees in the family’s pay. However, on Tuesday morning after Qari Zainuddin and Baaz Muhammad, a close aide of Zainuddin’s, retired to their living quarters after morning prayers Misbahuddin opened fire on the two men, killing Zainuddin and injuring Baaz Muhammad. The FIR registered by Baaz Muhammad alleges that the killer acted on behalf of Baitullah Mehsud. That is possible. In recent days, Qari Zainuddin had come out publicly against Baitullah and accused him, among other things, of having links with India and Israel and “working against Islam”. This against the backdrop of an impending military operation in South Waziristan Agency, Operation Rah-i-Nijaat, targeted against Baitullah.
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The News International, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2009
xPESHAWAR/WANA/MIRAMSHAH: Security forces were still facing tough resistance from the militants led by Baitullah Mehsud to secure the important Wana-Jandola road in South Waziristan Agency (SWA), where 15 people, four of them tribesmen, were killed in bombing by warplanes and gunship helicopters on Monday.

Also, situation remained tense in the adjoining North Waziristan Agency (NWA) after terrorist attacks on a military camp and a convoy of security forces by unknown people, causing injuries to three soldiers.
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The News International, Monday, June 22, 2009
The multi-faceted war against the Taliban develops new faces – and fronts – almost daily. The big guns have finally opened up on South Waziristan, reputedly the ‘hideout’ of Baitullah Mehsud – though whether he is there or elsewhere nobody seems to know for sure. F-16 fighters have been used in a ground-attack role (for which they are less than ideal) to bomb three suspected Taliban training facilities in South Waziristan, killing or wounding several insurgents. In other unidentified parts of South Waziristan the Taliban fired on our troops starting a firefight that went on for several hours. Nobody was able to say how many Taliban were killed or wounded. Reportedly, troop deployments into South Waziristan have now been completed and all roads that may be used to escape from the area have been blocked by the army. Probably. Our elderly helicopter gunships (a model no longer in production for which genuine spares are difficult to source) have attacked Kund Serai, Wara and Serwekai and troops have fired rockets at unspecified targets from Tanai Fort as well as having dug in on the heights in Madijan. The Jandola-Wana road which has been held by the Taliban for the last three years ‘is to be secured’ (as in it is not yet secured and we will probably have to fight for it) and all-in-all it looks to have been a busy day for the military.
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The News International, Pakistan, Sunday, June 21, 2009
PESHAWAR/WANA: Twenty-two suspected militants and six soldiers were reportedly killed in a daylong military action against the Baitullah Mehsud-led Taliban in the South Waziristan Agency (SWA) on Saturday as the troops cleared a portion of the Wana-Jandola Road.

Two fighter planes and a couple of gunship helicopters pounded the positions of the militants, who had occupied hilltops and blocked the Wana-Jandola Road between Tanai and Serwakai towns.
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The News International, Pakistan, Saturday, June 20, 2009
The US policy of targeted drone attacks continues. Twelve people have been killed in a strike on the compound of a Taliban commander in South Waziristan. The strikes are obviously based on sound intelligence. But this cannot detract from the fact that the innocent too die; there is no tally of the women and children killed since the drones first flew over our skies – but without doubt the figure runs to scores. There had in recent months been some suggestion that the US may reconsider its drone policy. Pakistan has requested that it be provided with pilotless planes to take charge of the strike policy itself.
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The News International, Pakistan, Saturday, June 20, 2009
Daily updates from military spokesmen tell us of casualties on both sides and the location of some operations in the preceding twenty-four hours. They are never accompanied by contemporary footage, a map or any supporting documentation – NIC of some of the dead Taliban for instance. We are now 54 days into the Swat battle, with Dir and Buner still active combat zones and Waziristan moving into the foreground as the site of a major engagement. We are told that at least 1,400 militants have been killed alongside 120 of our own soldiers. There is never mention of civilian casualties – the 'collateral damage' – despite ample anecdotal evidence from IDPs that civilians have died as a result of the actions of our army. No independent verification of the figures delivered daily has been made, and the media – apart from some carefully choreographed reports from Mingora – are excluded from the battle. The numbers of Taliban dead seem improbably high given that they fight in less-than-platoon sized units and are highly mobile. 'Hideouts' are reportedly 'cleared out' everyday – but have we ever seen a picture of one of these 'hideouts' immediately after it was 'cleared'? Does nobody in the military have access to a camera?
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The News International, Pakistan, Saturday, June 20, 2009
WANA/TANK: Amid reports of Nato’s assistance in military offensive against Baitullah Mehsud-led Taliban, Pakistani warplanes and gunship choppers on Friday continued pounding suspected hideouts of the militants in South Waziristan Agency (SWA), killing six militants.

Sources told The News that two jet fighters of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and the Pakistan Army’s two gunship choppers bombed the suspected hideouts of TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud in Barwand, Madejan, Serwakai and adjoining areas.
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Daily Times, Pakistan, Monday, June 15, 2009
RAWALPINDI: Security forces said on Sunday they killed 65 Taliban, including foreigners, and injured 50 in various army operations in South Waziristan and Bannu during the last 24 hours. “Thirty terrorists were killed, including a few foreigners, and 50 were injured at Makeen, South Waziristan due to the airstrike on Saturday,” the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) claimed in a statement.
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The News International, Pakistan
Thursday, June 04, 2009

The militants have made it quite obvious the war that is being fought in Malakand and elsewhere must be extended to Waziristan. Indeed, the daring kidnapping of dozens of pupils of the Razmak Cadet College may even have been an attempt to force the military to open up a new front, before it had finished off the battle in Swat, thus hoping to stretch it to the maximum, and by doing so trip it up. There is still confusion over how many students and staff members were kidnapped. Numbers range from around 100 to over 500. But it is now clear not all have been recovered. Accounts from law enforcers say 71 out of 122 victims have been retrieved; the ISPR says 80 were recovered and 15 are still missing; some of those who have returned home after their ordeal say the number is higher. But somewhere in the lawless realms of South Waziristan, a number of terrified boys and possibly their teachers are in the hands of the Taliban. Some reports even suggest they may have been taken to Baitullah Mehsud himself. Certainly, that wily veteran of battle seems to be preparing for a new – and we hope final – confrontation.

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Daily Times, Pakistan
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
analysis: Rasul Bakhsh Rais

The political consensus and national solidarity that we have succeeded in building against the Taliban can lead us to an enduring victory if we pay greater attention to the non-military components of reconstruction and rehabilitation

Battling warlords and religious militants cannot be a seasonal venture or an on-and-off operation. As indicated by the plight of millions of displaced persons from the conflict zones and the great sacrifices made by our security forces and civilians, it is an extraordinary situation that nobody would like to repeat.

The presence of militant groups, both religious and ethnic, their warlordism — coercive self-imposition — on local populations and holding them hostage under perpetual fear of violence poses a grave national security threat. We cannot leave people at the mercy of private armies and their gendarmes.

If we allow such situations to develop, as has happened in our western borderlands, not only would the sovereignty of the state erode, as it has, the successful warlordism of one group would encourage similar or other types of groups — sectarian or ethnic — to take up arms against the state and challenge its writ.

It is not only the logic of coherence and territorial unity of the state, but also a fundamental constitutional responsibility of the state to guarantee freedom and safety of local populations and free them from brutal warlordism.

The nation state and the warlords trying to run a parallel system of security and governance have a dialectical relationship. The two cannot co-exist; one has to eliminate the other for its own survival. Pakistan faces this challenge because violent groups have established little fiefdoms on the periphery that now threaten the peace and security of our major population centres.

Why have such groups emerged and how can we effectively defeat them?

There is a pile of well-argued explanations for the emergence of militant groups, from the residue of our support to the liberation of Afghanistan from Soviet occupation to the rise of militant political Islam. Also there happened to be a confluence of interests between an international coalition led by the United States during the Cold War to defeat communism, against which Pakistan was a frontline state, and the Islamist groups that had purely religious motivations against the Red Army.

The alliance between the two was opportunistic and accidental; neither ideological nor beyond the limits of Afghanistan. There was no clarity on what they would do after the common enemy was defeated, except for a vague expectation that the United States would stay on the ground and lead efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.

But Washington washed its hands of Afghanistan as soon as the Soviets began to withdraw, leaving it at the mercy of warring Mujahideen factions and Afghanistan’s predatory neighbours.

The international coalition that supported the Afghan Mujahideen gave no serious thought to normalising the devastated Afghan state and society. No one really bothered to consider the impact religious forces gloating over a historic victory against the Soviet Union and Afghan communists would have on regional security.

Being fixated just on humiliating and defeating the Soviet Union and not devoting political attention and resources to rebuilding Afghanistan and reintegrating Islamic militants peacefully back into society was a mistake of titanic proportions.

We now know the consequences of that neglect: civil war among Afghanistan’s social groups and the eventual emergence of the Taliban movement. Every neighbour of Afghanistan got sucked into the conflict, fuelling the fire of a war that demolished what was left of Afghan state and society.

The Taliban movement, backed by Pakistan and the Pashtun ethnic groups inside Afghanistan, routed other groups and warlords that were supported by Iran, Russia, India and some Central Asian states. That victory further contributed to two dangerous developments: rule by military conquest and transnational linkages among Islamist groups from an extended Central Asia to Pakistan.

It is a moot question whether it was the triumphalism of the transnational Islamists and their regional networking or the weakened position of countervailing forces like local opposition groups or the collapse of the state that facilitated the Taliban victory.

While making references to all other reasons related to the Cold War and Pakistan’s policy, let us not forget that militant religious groups and warlords have risen from the ruins of the states and their weak governing structures. In Afghanistan, there was no state left; only rival ethnic groups were left to fight the Taliban, and they couldn’t stand against the ferocious and determined Taliban force until the American-led international coalition with the cooperation of the Taliban’s ethnic rivals displaced them from power in 2001.

The governing capacity of the Pakistani state has gradually weakened in all areas, but notably more in the border regions because of the social, religious and political impact of the wars next door in Afghanistan.

Pakistan today faces the adverse consequences of the failure of the United States and other coalition partners in Afghanistan. After eight years of brutal and costly war, Afghanistan remains a fragile state, fragmented and in a state of perpetual war. The Taliban are now once again a rising force in Afghanistan as they have so far resisted the American efforts to pacify and rebuild the Pashtun areas.

There has indeed historically been a nexus between what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s western borderlands. In this part of the world, conflicts and groups involved in conflicts have often spilled over across borders on grounds of religion or nationalism or both. Now there is yet another malignant factor: the presence of our adversary across the border that acts with malicious intent to destabilise the country and make our war against the Taliban costlier.

The mission and determination of the armed forces, political leaders and the nation at large today is to defeat the Taliban and their affiliated militant groups permanently. The political consensus and national solidarity that we have succeeded in building against the Taliban can lead us to an enduring victory if we pay greater attention to the non-military components of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the millions of displaced persons.

More importantly, the very causes that have contributed to the rise of the Taliban militancy need to be addressed. We have to rebuild credible state capacity with a focus on strengthening the police, the paramilitary forces and intelligence, accompanied by transparent development and good governance.

As Afghanistan is largely an American baby and its responsibility in terms of security and reconstruction, we can only hope the US will do better than it has done so far. We have a direct stake in the peace and political integrity of Afghanistan because its failures are going affect our security very adversely.

One way we can isolate our borderland from the conflicts in Afghanistan is to integrate these regions into mainstream Pakistan with similar institutions, legal system and social services delivery.

It is time to rethink tribal exceptionalism and its outdated institutions. The Afghan wars and the rise of militancy have damaged Pakistan, and no amount of social repairing is likely to succeed. The solution lies in slow political integration, economic development and effective and participatory statehood. Only that will win us the current war and future peace.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

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Daily Times, Pakistan
Tuesday, June 02, 2009

The Taliban of Baitullah Mehsud suffered 25 dead after their attacks on army checkposts in South Waziristan and the Jandola frontier region were repulsed on Sunday. The attacks happened in the wake of the demand made by Baitullah that the army should leave “his area”. A similar demand had emanated from North Waziristan from his branch outfit there and other warlords with whom he is acting in cooperation. Sensing the coming storm, the local population is fleeing South Waziristan to swell the tide of refugees caused by Taliban atrocities in the semi-tribal areas under the NWFP government. The Army Public College Hangu was attacked on Sunday and its administrator cruelly done to death.

Baitullah Mehsud has suffered a defeat in Swat and his telephone call saying the Taliban should leave the area was intercepted by the army. The government has already announced that the army will go for Baitullah in his fastness of South Waziristan and this time everyone knows it means business, untied to any parliamentary resolution to evacuate the affected areas and allow “talks” with the killers. It is clear that skirmishes with the men of Baitullah Mehsud have already started and that the Taliban are forewarned about what they might face in the days to come. The truth is that they also knew what was coming in Swat but were shocked by the impact of the military attack.

As Swat is pacified in the days to come and the refugees start returning to their homes amid reinforced local administration, it will be time to think about the phenomenon of Baitullah Mehsud, the biggest warlord on both sides of the Durand Line, who has the backing of Al Qaeda and its international brigade of terrorists. It will be in order here to outline the organisational strength and firepower of this warlord with the help of the just-published book written by a Pashtun scholar Aqeel Yusufzai, titled Talibanisation (Urdu).

Baitullah Mehsud, born in Bannu, is from the Badwi Khel tribe, and his Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), while headquartered in Makin in South Waziristan, has branchline groups complete with their own commanders in North Waziristan, Kurram, Orakzai, Mohmand, Bajaur and Khyber. Thanks to the jihadi groups once supported by the Pakistani state and because of their affiliations with Al Qaeda, TTP has its supporting manpower in all the four provinces, particularly in South Punjab where first contacts were made between Sipah Sahaba and its Arab patrons. The Pakistani press has already taken note of. Commanders Qari Hussain, Rais Khan, Salim Sakin, Azmatullah are his front-leaders in South Waziristan while Qari Hussain specialises in training suicide-bombers.

After tasting the toughness of his subordinate Taliban group in the Malakand division, one can estimate the kind of power he will use when challenged. In North Waziristan, considered a territory of the Jalaluddin Haqqani group, he has Nur Syed Amir, Faqir Dawar and Haji Aftab Khan; the last-named also charged with looking after Baitullah’s foreign guests from the Arab world, Central Asia, Chechnya in Russia and Xinjiang in China. Commanders who lead bands of Taliban marauders in other agencies are: Hakimullah (Orakzai and Kurram with 8,000 men), Rehmanullah and Hazrat Ali (Khyber, 1,200), Umar Khalid (Mohmand, 5,000), and Faqir Muhammad (Bajaur, 5,000). Baitullah himself is estimated to dispose of 30,000 warriors, supplemented with Tahir Yuldashev’s 4,000 Uzbeks and other “foreigners”. The TTP could have nearly 50,000 men at its disposal. If you also count the non-Baitullah Taliban, the total estimate comes to over 100,000.

According to some estimates, Baitullah could have in his kitty around Rs 4 billion to spend annually. This money comes from drugs facilitated by Al Qaeda contacts, Arab money from the Gulf, money made from kidnapping for ransom, looting of banks, smuggling and “protection money” in general. He has weapons produced in Russia, the US and India, and has been looting explosives produced at the Wah munitions factory. His strength has been built up during a period of benign neglect in Islamabad, which has been focusing on India as the country’s premier threat. But Swat has proved that the Taliban can be taken on and defeated. The national consensus is there and crucial international support in these lean times is forthcoming too. *

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Editorial, The News Iternational,Pakistan
Sunday, May 24, 2009
President Zardari has said that he did not say 'Waziristan is next' in an interview published by the London Sunday Times on May 17. The interview was subsequently widely referred to by our electronic and print media. Speaking on Friday last he said…"I had said the government would eliminate militancy wherever it felt the need to do so" - which is not the same as saying 'Waziristan is next.' There is no shortage of politicians who are quoted and 'on the record' one day and deny that they said anything of the sort the next – and not just politicians; everybody from soap-opera stars to scientists pontificating on swine-fever deny their words despite having been filmed and recorded as having said them. Much of the time the dispute about who said what and when is nothing more than a storm in a teacup and dies down as quickly as it flared up. But the president's alleged words which were published in a reputable newspaper carry weight - and in these troubled times, consequence. At least some of those leaving Waziristan now are moving as a direct result of the 'Waziristan is next' quote.

The puzzle with the president's most recent quote about his interview with the Sunday Times (conducted by Christina Lamb, who knows more than many western journalists about the ins and outs of Pakistani politics) is that nowhere in the interview is he quoted as saying 'the government would eliminate militancy wherever it felt the need to do so'. Nor does the word 'Waziristan' appear anywhere either – at least in the online version of the interview. The problem of the 'missing' quotes may lie in the difference between the printed and the electronic versions of the same interview. There are often significant differences in terms of content between the newspaper as sold to the customer on the street and the newspaper accessed online. Online content is sometimes edited differently to the print version of the paper, usually by a different team of people and not infrequently in a different building. As things stand we are unable to make a comparison between the two versions and thus cannot know definitively.

No matter, the president has said in an interview with a private TV channel that 'the government will hunt down the Taliban everywhere in the country' – and 'the country' clearly includes Swat but – arguably - not Waziristan. The status of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is hedged with ambiguity, and whilst they are considered a part of Pakistan by the federal government the inhabitants frequently feel very differently. Reports of an 'operation' – which is not an 'operation' according to the army spokesman – in South Waziristan Agency may be the first indicators that the army is going to take the fight into the Tribal Agencies, boots on the ground. Not since 2002 has the army ventured across the line and into the Agencies, but needs must when the devil drives. The president may or may not have said something like 'Waziristan is next' – and it is in a sense immaterial either way. Waziristan is next; and we support the army and the government in their fight against those who would drag us back to the Dark Ages; and if in the process a little enlightenment is brought to the obscurantists of FATA, then so be it.

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Daily Times, Pakistan
May 23, 2009
ANALYSIS:Salman Tarik Kureshi

A holistic process of integration will be needed. Such a process is only possible after (and if) the cleansing process, commenced so far in Swat and Buner, is fully and successfully extended to FATA

Three weeks into action, the Malakand campaign is mercifully uninterrupted by faint-hearted politicos, milquetoast Assembly resolutions or disastrous ‘deals’. Unlike in the past, it certainly seems that this action will continue until substantive results are achieved. A little introspection would not be out of place.

In a time that now seems many ages away, the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto mused upon “the stirrings of a revolution” in the Third World and felt that this could “never be suppressed”. He said, “We all [are] children of revolution, a revolution whose onward march may sometimes be arrested by our own weaknesses and contradictions but cannot be stopped... We in the Third World should not be swayed by conspiratorial theories and forget the fact that the fault lies on the ground and within ourselves. To quote Meredith, we are betrayed by what is false within.”

In the three-and-a-half decades since these musings, the revolution perceived by Mr Bhutto seems to have evaporated and conspiratorial theories spawn unendingly as the Pakistani state shakes itself to pieces. The fatal flaw truly lies, it seems, within our selves, in what is false within.

Even at the time Mr Bhutto recorded these observations, at least one such fatal falsity was exemplified in the fawning figure by the prime minister’s own side of a military general, whose obsequious manner disguised immense and ruthless personal ambition. Where we are today, in Swat, Waziristan and elsewhere, is owed in substantial measure to the dark regime visited on the country by this satanic general.

But it is altogether too easy to pin the blame for all that has gone wrong on the shoulders of a single fanatical evildoer. There was much that was ‘false within’ during the regime of Mr Bhutto, his predecessors and his successors — the prime minister’s own blind hubris being not the only fatal flaw.

A ‘fatal flaw’ is a fundamental defect — a blind spot, a false intent, a dishonourable policy — that ineluctably leads to tragic disaster. These are distinct from the societal ‘fault lines’ (of ethnicity, class, sect, tribe, whatever), so beloved of political commentators, which cause conflicts within a political entity. Properly handled, such angularities are capable of yielding powerful syntheses.

But the kinds of fatal flaws that lie deep within the psyche of our ruling groups, have led only to violence, bloodshed and social breakdown. They are the false institutional threads woven through the warp and woof of this country’s social and political fabric.

One such fatal flaw has been the contempt for constitutional principles and the rule of law that has permitted continued existence of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas: these are all said to be under the direct charge of the President of the Islamic Republic.

But, let it be quite clear, the laws of the state of Pakistan do not prevail here. This is both a legal fact and a reality on the ground. Now, if the normal laws of a state do not apply in a particular region, meaning that the legislature of the state cannot legislate regarding that region, ordinary logic inescapably suggests that the state cannot be considered as sovereign in that region.

From the beginning, Pakistan has done nothing to integrate these regions with the rest of the country. Worse, where the administrators of the British Raj, through a combination of guile and clever management, had generally succeeded in exercising substantial indirect control over these areas, even their kind of hikmat-e amli has since disappeared altogether.

A flourishing trade in smuggled goods sprang up in the FATA belt. Customs check posts were established well inside the borders of Pakistan in a futile attempt at preventing these goods from entering our cities without paying customs levies.

In the course of time, other extra-legal trades developed: illicit weaponry and illicit drugs. Kalashnikovs, Uzis, TTs and Mausers were streaming southwards to meet the demand of the criminal bands, ethnic gangs and sectarian killers of Karachi.

As regards drugs, the heroin factories in FATA, which appeared in the subcontinent for the first time, churned out their lethal powders for marketing into Karachi (which came to boast of the largest population of hard drug addicts anywhere) and export to the rest of the world.

By the 1990s, motor vehicles stolen in Lahore and other cities were being spirited away into the tribal areas, there to be repainted and sold back into those very cities. Kidnap victims were lodged in this wild region-beyond-the-law while their fingers and toes were cut off one at a time and dispatched to their relatives to stimulate rapid compliance with ransom demands.

The point is that, thanks to the negligence of every Pakistani government over the decades, these regions had been allowed to become a Criminal’s Paradise — an extended band of lawlessness along our northwest that sheltered and offered a staging ground for every kind of organised crime and hospitable refuge to fugitives from justice. These latter have included the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

At first, they used these regions principally as staging grounds for incursions into Afghanistan, actions that both NATO and President Karzai are continually protesting. But, after 2003, the regime of General Pervez Musharraf permitted the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan of Baitullah Mehsud and others to gain control of a huge swathe of territory, within which it now actively governs — collecting taxes and operating a crude police force and primitive justice system.

Whatever negligible writ of the threatened state of Pakistan may have existed, it has completely disappeared now and this region has become an entirely separate ‘Islamic Emirate’. The violent primitives spawned here have erupted outward to the districts of Pishin, Peshawar, Bannu, Kohat and, most dramatically, the Swat valley. They have carried their war against the state of Pakistan into our major cities, from Peshawar to Karachi, and abroad to Mumbai. Their terror bombings have caused the mass murder of citizens everywhere and they are clearly implicated in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Victory in Swat will be utterly incomplete if the tribal regions are not also cleansed of these murderous insurgents. More, the state of Pakistan will remain in mortal peril. The point is that the FATA Band of Anarchy will continue to fling out destructive tendrils in every direction, until such time as this belt ceases to exist as a separate political and administrative entity.

As I have suggested in these pages before, a holistic process of integration — comprising a raft of constitutional, economic, ideological and administrative measures — will be needed. Such a process is only possible after (and if) the cleansing process, commenced so far in Swat and Buner, is fully and successfully extended to FATA.

To enlarge on the lines from George Meredith that Mr Bhutto quoted above:



It’s morning: but no morning can restore

What we have forfeited...In tragic life,

No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:

We are betrayed by what is false within.



The long-standing neglect of the tribal areas is only one of the many fatal flaws that is destroying us. There are others, on some of which I will touch in later articles, but this one has had a special significance. Worse (and this is the tragic part), it had been capable of less painful remedy for most of our history.

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Editorial, The News International, Pakistan
Saturday, May 23, 2009

We are now hearing of plans to rapidly extend the current military operation into Waziristan, and possibly the areas around it. Tensions are mounting in the region in anticipation of hostilities and tribes seem already to be deciding what side to take. Fierce fighting meanwhile continues in Swat while the militants have agreed to move out of Lower Dir. This time round, the operation has consistently seemed decisive and well planned.

However in all this we still do not know what the civilian toll is. Both local and international human rights groups have warned the conflict has inflicted immense suffering on non-combatants. The fact that the Taliban continue in some places to use them as human shields adds to the risks they face. There has also been a widespread destruction of homes and crops. IDPs remain concerned over the impact this will have on their lives and their livelihoods in the future. At present there is no neutral account of how many residents of Swat and other places have been killed. The time has come for this bleak figure to be put on record. Perhaps a parliamentary commission needs to be established to look into the issue. What is also required is an all-out effort on the part of the military to minimize civilian casualties. The ISPR has assured us this is being attempted, but we do not know how successful such efforts are. Perhaps more now needs to be done to examine this issue and address it at the highest levels. The fact is that it will have an impact too in determining how people look at the conflict which for the moment continues to rage and what legacy it will leave behind once the bombardment and its aftermath is finally over.

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Eleven people are killed in two bomb blasts in Peshawar; 29 villagers are reported killed in suspected drone attacks in North Waziristan; and 49 Taliban militants are slain by troops in Swat.

Los Angeles Times
By Zulfiqar Ali
May 17, 2009

Reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan -- A car bomb ripped through an Internet cafe and other businesses Saturday in a congested neighborhood of Peshawar, killing at least 11 people, including two disabled students and two teachers in a passing bus.

A second bomb exploded in the northwestern city several hours later, wounding four people.


The bombings came amid continued bloodshed across Pakistan, with residents of a rural tribal region reporting 29 deaths from a suspected U.S. drone missile attack on a village and Pakistani authorities reporting that they had killed 47 more militants in their campaign to retake the Swat Valley.

The first bombing in Peshawar occurred about 1:25 p.m. as a bus from the Educational Institute for Special Children was passing near the historic Asiya Gate.

At least 15 vehicles, including the school bus, were destroyed or heavily damaged. Several nearby shops were also damaged. The windows of many houses on both sides of the circular road were shattered.


Authorities said that about 30 mortar shells were packed in a car, set off by a timer.

Television news showed the damaged white-and-green school bus that had been taking disabled children to their homes around the city.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for that bombing or for the second, a smaller explosion.

Residents of the North Waziristan tribal region said two missiles believed fired by drone aircraft hit a residential compound in Khaisore village about 8 a.m, killing 29.

A house was reduced to rubble and a nearby seminary was damaged.

Residents said it was the third drone attack on the village since such attacks against militant targets began in the tribal belt.

In the Swat Valley campaign, the Pakistani army says it has killed more than 800 of an estimated 4,000 Taliban militants in the area and that many have fled or disguised themselves to blend in with people fleeing the fighting.

Meanwhile, the government sought Saturday to counter speculation that extremists could seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani complained of an "orchestrated campaign" to "discredit Pakistan's nuclear capability."

"We are determined to retain nuclear deterrence at all cost while ensuring fail-safe security of our nuclear assets," he told lawmakers, according to a statement from his office.

Ali is a special correspondent. The Associated Press was used in compiling this report.

May 14, 2009

Pakistan plans to escalate its military operations against the Taliban massively by opening a second front in the country's lawless border areas.
The army, which is fighting in Swat Valley and two neighbouring districts in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), is planning to begin a new offensive in the badlands of the Waziristan tribal areas as early as next month, sources told The Daily Telegraph.

"The army is planning to go into Waziristan, possibly in June, which will involve huge numbers of troops in an attempt to establish some sort of state control over the area," said a source close to the Pakistani military.

Washington has intensified pressure on Pakistan to launch an offensive in Waziristan since President Barack Obama came to power.

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