Militants claim victory in ambush
Pakistani troop convoy attacked by Qaeda fighters
By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff, 3/23/2004
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Islamic militants said yesterday they had attacked and defeated a convoy of Pakistani Army reinforcements headed into the remote northern tribal areas where the army has been battling Al Qaeda fighters and allied local warriors since Thursday.
A tribal official in the area said by telephone that the militants hid in a post normally used by local security forces and ambushed the passing convoy. He said up to 40 soldiers were killed and all of the convoy's vehicles were burned. If true, it would be one of the most serious and successful attacks on Pakistani forces to date by Al Qaeda and allied militants.
General Shaukat Sultan, the chief army spokesman, confirmed that the attack occurred. He said he did not have casualty figures, but said those given by local people were "a gross overstatement."
"The militants fired rockets at the convoy, and there were casualties," he said, adding that the ambush occurred in "a difficult, mountainous area."
Colonel Nadeem Ayub Khan, a retired Pakistani military intelligence specialist, said many more such attacks are to be expected as Pakistan attempts to assert control over the rugged, mountainous terrain near the country's border with Afghanistan, an area of wild mountains and fiercely independent tribes, bandits, and Islamists that the British Empire at its height could not subdue.
"The people there are fighters, born with weapons in their hands, experts at guerrilla fighting," he said. "We are a conventional army and can fight a good conventional battle. They never engage in pitched battle. For Pakistan's army, this is a foreign area . . . and they know it like the backs of their hands."
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