Terror wars The local supporters of Al Qaeda, instead of being attacked, have been bought off with a sum that could come to over $800,000. It has actually been announced that the local tribal leaders will thus “pay back” the money they had “borrowed” from Al Qaeda. But the fact is that in a very clever move the Pakistan Army is betting with the enemy dollar-for-dollar for local loyalties.After early blundering, the Pakistan Army has grasped the seriousness of the Al Qaeda presence. The early “denial” among the officers has vanished, resulting in hardnosed strategy-making and deployment of personnel that can stand up in sophistication of combat to the Al Qaeda foe. This enabled President Musharraf, currently visiting Uzbekistan, to nod more convincingly when President Karimov briefed him about the terrorist Tahir Yuldashev, who is now sheltering in Pakistan, and explained how dangerous has been the linkage between Tahir’s Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the London-based Hizb al Tahrir (3,000 in prisons in Uzbekistan) whose members have been allowed to teach in many English-medium schools in the private sector in Pakistan while the organisation remains officially banned. Tahir Yuldashev, it may be noted, was wounded while fighting the Pakistan Army but his local wife still drives around in South Waziristan in a Mercedes!
President Pervez Musharraf said on Sunday that he would not allow Uzbek terrorists to use his country’s territory to launch attacks on the ex-Soviet nation.
Pakistan Army used its Special Services Group (SSG) commandoes near Miranshah in the North Waziristan Agency on Saturday to fight the Al Qaeda terrorists. It killed two of them, said to be of Sudanese and Qatari nationalities, and arrested 11 others, mostly believed to be foreigners. There were also several “Punjabi-speaking” militants among them. Brigadier (retd) Mehmood Shah, the security chief of the Tribal Areas, has been quoted as saying that the authorities intend to seize heavy weapons belonging to tribesmen if they were not surrendered in a government buy-back programme “meant to disarm militants in the region”. What does the government want to purchase? The list is impressive: anti-aircraft guns, missiles, mortars, rocket launchers, landmines, hand-grenades, light machineguns and assault rifles.
Let’s face it. Our national politics is so frozen around the hostile triangulation of MMA-ARD-Musharraf that no reaction other than denial will issue forth about the methods being used by Islamabad in the Waziristan war against Al Qaeda. The MMA has already said that Al Qaeda doesn’t exist; that it is certainly not in Waziristan if it exists; that the terrorists are old holdovers from the jihad against the Soviet Union and are mostly Arabs who came and settled here, marrying local wives. The MMA has even denied that there are any Uzbeks in the area or that any have been killed or captured by the army. The “guests” have to be respected and protected, says the MMA, and it has actually put this condition as an obligation in the oath of the mohtasib in the controversial Hasba Bill it wants to convert into law in the NWFP.
According to the army, out of the 600 Al Qaeda terrorists “supposedly” sheltering in Waziristan, 150 have been killed and 300 captured while the rest are floating around in groups of three and four. However, the latest encounter belies this claim. There are more Al Qaeda terrorists in the region than the army is willing to admit and they are not in small groups. Saying less than that would mean admitting that the army has little knowledge of the new geographical locations from where they can come into Pakistan. But of course that is not the case. Certainly, their “Punjabi-speaking” companions are none other than the jihadis belonging to the old, now banned, militias that Pakistan itself fielded in Afghanistan and Kashmir to advance its regional strategy not so long ago. Indeed, these could very well be a part of the community of plainsmen who have taken training with Al Qaeda and then carried out attacks against President Musharraf himself and his Karachi corps commander — the Jundullah type of local guerrillas to whom some ‘sympathetic’ doctors in Karachi have been providing succour in the name of Islam.
Now consider the other side. The ARD parties have followed everyone in Pakistan in criticising the Waziristan operation against Al Qaeda. Fortunately, not all the criticism has been in the category of denial or sloganeering (“doing the bidding of the Americans”). Some of it has arisen from the mystification of the operation and the fact that the operation was repeatedly botched (200 Pak Army troops killed) and the “foreigners” killed or arrested were not put before the media. At least three ex-ISI chiefs have completely or partially disagreed with the operation and ticked off President Musharraf in the media. As for many people at large and most of the Urdu press, the terrorists remain ‘heroes’ who have decided to fight America. In fact, some journalists who have tried to report honestly on Waziristan have been threatened or harassed into silence. All this has prevented a closer and more objective look at the evolving policy on the Al Qaeda presence in Pakistan.
The next bit of sophistication is the use of money. Waziristan is flush with Al Qaeda dollars. The rewards announced by the government simply have not lured the wily Pushtun from his purchased loyalty to Al Qaeda. Since 2003 when the operation started, the army has made two “indirect” pacts with the Al Qaeda. The first one was at Shakai with commander Nek Muhammad who denounced it immediately after signing it and refused to “register his foreign guests”. The second one was signed at Sararogha in North Waziristan last month with commander Baitullah Mehsud, but this time a lot of money changed hands. The local supporters of Al Qaeda, instead of being attacked, have been bought off with a sum that could come to over $800,000. It has actually been announced that the local tribal leaders will thus “pay back” the money they had “borrowed” from Al Qaeda. But the fact is that in a very clever move the Pakistan Army is betting with the enemy dollar-for-dollar for local loyalties.
Denial is not advisable. The MMA is not inclined to listen, so let’s forget about explaining anything to them. But all other Pakistanis, including the two mainstream parties, the PMLN and the PPPP, must take another look at what is happening in Waziristan. The issue has to be delinked from the argument over democracy which has been thin on the ground in any case. Instead the issue should be seen in the perspective of the country’s development as an economic unit under the normal writ of the state. The political stakeholders should keep the pressure on, even make support on the issue conditional, but should not lean on the tactic of denial. They should remember that when it is their turn to tackle the problem, this denial will create insurmountable hurdles for everyone. *
dailytimes.com.pk
The results are definitely coming..as times have changed....
TASHKENT: President Pervez Musharraf said on Sunday that he would not allow Uzbek terrorists to use his country’s territory to launch attacks on the ex-Soviet nation.
“I have assured President (Islam Karimov) that Pakistan will not allow the use of its soil by any terrorists from Uzbekistan ... and we will act against them,” President Musharraf said during a visit to the Uzbek capital Tashkent. President Musharraf signed an agreement with this ex-Soviet country on fighting terrorism.
President Musharraf also signalled that Pakistan would be ready to extradite any alleged Uzbek terrorists captured in Pakistan.
dailytimes.com.pk |
