Pakistan Launches Full-Scale Offensive

30,000 Troops Deploy In Militant Stronghold

ground offensive Saturday in the insurgent haven of
South Waziristan, starting a much-awaited fight that
could define the nation's increasingly bloody domestic
struggle against Islamist extremism.Pakistani officials
said nearly 30,000 troops were deployed in the Taliban
and al-Qaeda stronghold, from which militants have
planned a two-week-long string of attacks against the
nation's formidable security forces.

The assaults have killed nearly 200 people and have
further destabilized a weak government that the United
States has pressed to take a tougher stand against
militancy. Now, with public alarm rising and winter
snowfall approaching, Pakistani officials indicated
they could wait no longer.
"There has to be consensus in the face of what is
clearly now a war," said Sherry Rehman, a ruling party
lawmaker. "We have to treat this as a battle for
Pakistan's survival."

The offensive is a gamble. Pakistani forces earlier
retreated after three far smaller incursions into South
Waziristan, an essentially ungoverned terrain of ridges
and peaks that is unfamiliar to most except the tribes
that live there. It is a potential vortex for the
Pakistani army, which has been trained to battle
archenemy India on the plains of the Punjab province,
not conduct alpine counterinsurgency operations.
To succeed, experts on the insurgency said, the
military will need to stunt the leadership of the
feared Mehsud network of the Pakistani Taliban, which
has regrouped since its chief was killed by a U.S.
missile strike in August. The military will have to do
that without alienating civilians in the area, they
said, and before winter sets in. The operation is
expected to last six to eight weeks, said Maj. Gen.
Athar Abbas, a military spokesman. "The stakes for both
sides are enormous," said Bruce Hoffman, a
counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University. "The
attacks of the past couple weeks demonstrate that the
militants are really concerned . . . and that will have
increased the ardor of the Pakistani forces to succeed.
But it's also an indication of why they can't fail --
the threat is already manifest."

American officials have said that U.S.-led military
efforts in neighboring Afghanistan can work only if
Pakistan, a U.S. ally, eliminates militant havens from
its border region. Experts said cornering the Pakistani
Taliban could also help the United States better target
its drone strikes in the tribal areas along the Afghan
border, which Pakistan says have "seriously impeded"
its own battle against terrorism by killing civilians.
Although the Bush administration began the drone
attacks, President Obama has authorized a sharp
increase in the missile launches. U.S. intelligence
officials have said that the CIA-directed attacks --
more than 40 this year -- have killed at least a dozen
insurgent leaders. In addition to strikes against
al-Qaeda, Pakistani insurgent leader Baitullah Mehsud
was said to have been killed in an August attack. That
strike was seen as an incentive to the Pakistanis to
launch a ground assault in the mountainous region where
headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda and
other insurgent groups are located.

While problems remain, both U.S. and Pakistani
officials say that intelligence cooperation between the
two governments has improved, with Pakistan aiding in
drone targeting. But such cooperation is rarely made
public in Pakistan, where anti-Americanism runs high.
The administration was silent as the offensive got
underway.
After months of targeting South Waziristan with aerial
strikes, Pakistani troops stormed the region from three
sides, backed by jets and helicopter gunships, military
officials said. A senior military official said
soldiers were targeting areas held by the Mehsud tribe
and expected to battle as many as 10,000 Taliban
insurgents, bolstered by about 2,000 "foreign
fighters." The official did not specify their origins.
Islamist insurgents in Pakistan are not confined to

South Waziristan, and experts say the Taliban's links
with other domestic militant groups and with al-Qaeda,
which is thought to provide training and supplies,
frequently shift. But the military says the Pakistani
Taliban is based in South Waziristan and has planned
most domestic attacks -- including the recent spate --
from there. The Pakistani Taliban "is the immediate
threat," said Saad Mohammed, a retired army brigadier.
"They will resist and fight."

Information from South Waziristan was scarce and
impossible to confirm Saturday. Roads were closed, a
curfew was imposed and phone networks were cut off in
the area, where foreign journalists are denied entry.
Civilians have been steadily flowing out of the region
over the past few months amid warnings about the
offensive. The U.N. refugee agency said Friday that
80,000 people had left South Waziristan and had
registered in districts of the nearby North-West
Frontier Province by early September, and that an
additional 2,000 families had arrived in recent days.
Pakistani officials said they had not set up camps
because the displaced were staying with friends or
families. Officials said they did not expect exodus of
the kind that followed a successful anti-Taliban
operation earlier this year in the Swat Valley, which
caused 2 million people to flee.
Kalimullah Mehsud, a trader from the Makeen area of
South Waziristan who relocated to a neighboring
district Friday, said few civilians remained in the
region.

"No life is left there; there is no electricity, no
communication. There is a shortage of food and other
essential commodities," said Mehsud, 38, adding that he
had evacuated his wife and five children four months
ago.

The full-force battle with insurgents comes as the
government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, is
struggling to quell a public and military backlash to
conditions imposed by a U.S. aid package, which demands
that Pakistan do more to subdue the militants in its
midst.

The furor has strained the government's relations with
the military, which in the past has been reluctant to
use its troops to fight fellow Pakistanis in an
anti-terrorism battle viewed by many in the country as
an American endeavor.

These divides are dangerous at a time when insurgents
appear to be coalescing and focusing their efforts on
the Pakistani state, analysts said.
"You need internal unity and a shared view on how to
address this threat," said S. Rifaat Hussain, chairman
of the Defense and Strategic Studies Department at
Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. "We have to do it
as much for our own reasons as we do because we are a
strategic partner of the United States." ad_icon
But a victory in South Waziristan would hardly end
Pakistan's militant scourge. Islamist insurgents have
carved out other strongholds, such as in the
southwestern province of Baluchistan, U.S. officials
and Pakistani analysts have said.
"Something like this has to be sustained and not only
go through North and South Waziristan, but, to be
effective, it's got to eliminate the spaces where
militants are able to flee," Hoffman said. "For
Pakistan, unfortunately, it's just a starting point."
(Washington post)