Raymond Barrett

Sunday Business Post
By Raymond Barrett

Pakistan’s army has reported killing more than 100 Taliban militants as part of an ongoing offensive in south Waziristan – a semi-autonomous region along the Afghan border. Two divisions – around 28,000 soldiers – have been deployed to target strongholds of the Tehreeke-Taliban network, the group linked to a continuing series of attacks across the country that have left nearly 200 dead so far this month.

This large-scale assault has involved heavy artillery and helicopter gunships. Military spokesmen have confirmed 18 army fatalities as they confront a guerrilla force estimated to be 10,000-strong and believed to include around 1,000 foreign fighters and al-Qaeda members.

The mission aims to bring some degree of centralised control to what had become a de facto Taliban ‘mini-state’ beyond the reach of the government.

The army also wants to disrupt militant training camps that have dispatched suicide bombers to civilian targets across Pakistan. A bombing in a university in the capital Islamabad prompted the government to close all schools last Wednesday, while a senior military officer was assassinated by two gunmen.

But this is not simply an internal issue. South Waziristan is also a logistical basis for the al-Qaeda network and other militants fighting Nato forces across the border in Afghanistan. The area is seen as a strategic fulcrum vital to any broader, regional security initiative.

Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen praised Pakistan’s move last week at the organisation’s Brussels headquarters. Nato leads the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in neighbouring Afghanistan with around 67,000 troops. ‘‘It is crucial for stability in the whole region that the Pakistani government and military succeed in their endeavours,” he said.

Rasmussen added that Nato forces would ‘‘take sufficient measures to deal with a possible influx of Taliban fighters’’ attempting to escape into Afghanistan.

The ISAF wants to minimise the inflow of militants into Afghanistan, ahead of a controversial electoral run-off due to take place on November 7. President Hamid Karzai’s victory in an August election was overturned by the country’s electoral complaints commission, after accusations of widespread electoral fraud.

The uncertainty surrounding Karzai’s position has also compromised plans in Washington to increase its commitment to a government increasingly seen as venal and ineffective.

The importance of Pakistan to any regional security initiative has been emphasised by the visit of American senator John Kerry and General David Petraeus to Islamabad last week to discuss the ongoing military operation. The US has repeatedly asked Islamabad to target militants in south Waziristan, and used an unmanned aerial drone to kill a senior Taliban commander there last August.

Despite some public protestations of mutual objectives, Pakistan’s all-powerful generals and Nato do not share the same long-term goals, a point that has become increasingly apparent as the ISAF mission enters its ninth year.

Pakistan’s officer-class elite is primarily concerned with internal security, and has shown little desire to pursue militants in its Federally Administered Tribal Areas who choose to fight only in Afghanistan.

Besides, the army has been down this road before. Similar campaigns over the last four years have often ended in short-lived peace deals. A previous agreement allowed militants to assume control of the Swat valley in the neighbouring North-West Frontier Province and implement their own version of sharia law. This experiment in containment fell apart last May and the army attempted to reassert control in an offensive that killed hundreds of militants.

The one consistency throughout these cycles of violence has been the suffering of the displaced civilian population. The current fighting has created a massive refugee problem, and tens of thousands fled the region prior to the military operation. The UN reported that 1.5 million people were displaced in May during the Swat valley operation.

Officials in Islamabad would do well to bear in mind that such large-scale military action often has far-reaching and unseen consequences.

It was from the flood of refugees created by the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s that the Taliban initially sprang from – a destabilising force in the region to this day.