N Waziristan: the final frontier BY Sherry Rehman

[niazikhan2]

There is a saying that if you can't defeat your enemy, befriend him. This is particularly applicable to the tribal areas that border Afghanistan, where in six agencies the army is in the midst of an unprecedented military offensive against the militants. The cornerstone of security policy here is to attack militants close to Al Qaeda, but spare armed syndicates that protect Pakistan's flanks.

The turbulence in the border zone has led to Washington putting out ill-advised strategic leaks about a possible military intervention inside Pakistan's borders. North Waziristan, and what the Pakistan army is able to do there, seems to have become the litmus test for relations between Islamabad and Washington. After the Faisal Shehzad incident in Times Square, Washington's pressure has mounted on Islamabad to act against the Taliban operating out of North Waziristan.

After the United States' failure to build institutional structures in Afghanistan and install governance or central authority there, for Washington, the test of US-Nato ground offensives in the south and Loya Paktiya is now being linked to Pakistan's push on the Haqqani-led groups from North Waziristan. Despite a massive offensive in the Afghan town of Marjah, the expected Taliban reversals have not materialised.

For Pakistan this is a battle for its stability and survival. The imperative to act against terrorist and sectarian groups in Punjab and Balochistan, as well as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, are long overdue. After the massacre of nearly a hundred Ahmadis in Lahore last week at the hands of banned sectarian outfits, the need to act against entrenched extremist groups is compelling. In Punjab, the provincial government needs to go in with a police-run counter-terror sweep against militants embedded in the warrens of its cities. The federal government needs to back up this action with pro-minority legislation to show support for victims of extremist actions.

The challenge in North Waziristan is that Islamabad does not have the military or civilian capacity to open all fronts at the same time. Despite impressive successes in other tribal agencies, the Pakistani army faces a 50,000-strong critical mass of armed guerrilla combatants in North Waziristan. They have learnt to avoid set-piece battles. After army operations in surrounding areas, a hardened assortment has sought sanctuary there. From the Tehrik-e-Taliban that attacks Pakistan, to the Haqqani-group that doesn't, and Punjab-jihadist outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Lashkar-az-Zil, Al Qaeda veterans and Salafists, all the hardcore elements are said to be holed out there. Islamabad's fear is that if it disturbs this hornets' nest, maintaining the fragile consensus against terrorism at home will be as difficult as protecting its cities from bombings.

This will be no shock-and-awe exercise that can be switched off with a remote-control device. Pakistan has already lost over 3,000 people as a result of backlash terrorist attacks and taken an economic hit of $35 billion. The question is: will the US be around to even hold down the hammer to Pakistan's fist when its army swoops down on this final frontier for targeted strikes at Al Qaeda strongholds like Mir Ali? In any counterinsurgency initiative in mountainous terrain, the military gains tactical advantage from choking the escape routes of enemy combatants. The Waziristan trails that run through some of the world's highest mountains are legendary for affording escape routes to Afghanistan, so without the obvious rush to block contiguous border conduits from NATO commanders in Afghanistan, the whole exercise will lead to enemy dispersal into hospitable terrain.

Given the asymmetry in border check-posts on both sides of the Durand Line, it is unlikely that any permanent flush-out of the two Waziristans is possible. If North Waziristan is grand central for terrorists, then Afghan border provinces provide their strategic depth. For the whole terrorism endeavour to turn the tide, it is actually the US and Nato that will have to pull weight on their own side. Pakistan too will have to step up border checks and review unwritten peace deals with tribal leaders that play too many sides.

Another key question is: how long can the Pakistani army stay bogged down in the agencies it has actually secured? What capacity do we have for a civilian build, hold and transition component to the project? Once again, before pressuring Pakistan with warnings of escalation of a war that the US itself cannot manage in Afghanistan, huge governance commitments like ROZ assistance will have to roll off the US machine.

Why expect Pakistan to do more than reverse the tide of the Taliban in some areas when Washington has not been able to broker a new post-insurgency model for Afghanistan? Pakhtun alienation is not a concern for exiting nations, but it has huge potential for blowback in Pakistan, where Karachi is host to five million Pakhtuns, who are mostly undocumented in the formal sector.

What will help is a phase-by-phase plan for securing the area, holding it until the tribes that have been terrorised by the Taliban are able to return and do business. Secondly, while lessons are useful, Waziristan is not Malakand. The elites in the tribal areas have been marginalised by the Taliban for a much longer time, yet they will resist governance models that diminish their pre-Taliban political powers. The military will have to stay in Waziristan until the police and FC there are strengthened by quantum proportions, and the tribal leadership prepared for critical reforms and political activity by mainstream parties.

Fata reform will only work if introduced incrementally, and the government's recent announcements, if implemented, will be a very brave start. At the federal level, security-sector reform is critical to this project, because peace deals with militants that promise not to attack government installations at one time almost always have turned against the hand that fed them. As a temporary tactical move that gives one flank relief doing an operation where defeat is not an option, there is some use to neutralising militants to focus on the first-line enemy, but never in the long-run. Tribal lashkars too fall into that category. The state must start assuming charge of security.

The politics of a military operation are never easy. No military relishes fighting inside its own borders, and no civilian, elected government embraces the use of force as a first, or even second, option. Clearly, this cannot be a hair-trigger plan. The government has put its full weight behind the operations, despite the costs that invariably accrue from such initiatives. Pakistan now has a generation of lost people, human tragedies, economic crises, internal strife and political instability.

While the military presses an offensive in Orakzai Agency, there will be little room to divert forces for anything more than strategic strikes on North Waziristan areas where the terrorists cluster. Pakistan must dismantle Al Qaeda as a priority, as well as the India-centric jihadist outfits. It also must allow Kabul to form its own stable government and hope for a friendly partner. But it will need Pakhtun reconcilables to maintain stability from Afghan border provinces after the expected US troop drawdown in 2011, and seeking more than surgical raids in North Waziristan is asking too much. Pakistan must act decisively against terrorists, but on its own game-plan.



The writer is member of the National Security Committee in parliament, and former federal minister for information