Peace deals and other blunders

Sunday, 26 Apr, 2009

By Moazzam Husain

TWO months into Operation Enduring Freedom, the fugitives’ escape into Pakistan’s tribal areas was a foregone conclusion. That was the time to closely watch the Durand Line, not just the Khyber and Kurram agencies

Even meagre efforts like mobile scout parties, tribal lashkars and airborne patrols would have sent a signal that Fata was not an open sanctuary. These efforts may have discouraged or even intercepted some of these 3,500 mule-trotting, heavily armed foreign fighters. They would have kept the trail hot for those that did manage to breach the Durand Line in the last few weeks of 2001.

As was expected, fleeing Al Qaeda and other militants notably those from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, members of the Chechen resistance movement, Chinese Uighur fighters and other smaller groups rode into Pakistan and set up camp around Angoor Adda in South Waziristan.

We can all beat up on Tommy Franks later for taking his eye off the ball but that doesn’t absolve us from taking ours off the Durand Line. That was our first blunder.

Now with these foreign fighters inside its borders, what did Pakistan do in response? The short answer is ‘nothing’. The long answer is that right until the spring of 2004 Pakistan did nothing to prevent foreign fugitives from settling in areas under its control. It did nothing to prevent them from forming local linkages often beyond the tribal areas. It did nothing to stop them from carrying out subsequent attacks across the Durand Line.

In this window of time, space and resources, Al Qaeda scaled up its 055 Brigade into a full-fledged shadow army. The Lashkar-i-Zil, as it is called, has come to permeate the Taliban and all other foreign and local jihadi groups. In the recent Swat footage its soldiers are discernable — heads covered in hoods, generally better dressed, wearing green military jackets with stashes of AK- 47 magazines, shalwars above ankles and sneakers

Blunder number two came when we lost the opportunity to mop up the local jihadi outfits lock, stock and barrel. The writing was on the wall in black and bold: Pakistani jihadis were redundant liabilities with no place in the new world at least in the foreseeable future. A swift dragnet operation could have put them out of business in one single stroke.

Instead we got the famous U-turn speech of January 2002 and a light-fisted crackdown that only drove these outfits underground and eventually out of the intelligence orbit altogether. They subsequently resurfaced in the tribal areas

The third blunder was Kalosha, a badly planned military operation, with disastrous consequences. Fast forward to March 2004. Location: Azam Warsak where Tahir Yuladashev was holed up with 300 fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an Al Qaeda affiliate. An intelligence estimate of their position and strength existed with the ISI but was not shared with the FC and the army. On being surrounded, the IMU fighters fought ferociously and then tore through the cordon riding Toyota pick-ups with mounted missile launchers.

Inflicting 200 casualties on the FC, the Al Qaeda fighters broke away to link up with reinforcements — the forces of Pakistani Taliban commander Nek Mohammad. Soon helicopter gunships were called in. However the can of worms had been opened and the fighting spread all over Wana. South Waziristan was now on fire.

What could have been a short, precise and hard-hitting operational plan in a localised area no more than 40 square miles turned out to be a bungle with disastrous implications.

When did our war courses stop teaching how to employ stealth, surprise and deception in combat operations? What happened to our Special Forces? Why aren’t field and electronic intelligence and psychological operations being utilised to inflict maximum and targeted damage on the enemy? Have we considered engaging the enemy in surprise locations with night operations deploying the advantage of night vision equipment, and the eight Cobra attack helicopters that are C-Nite equipped? How often have these capabilities been used and to what effect?.

Nek Mohammad was subsequently taken out in a US drone attack.

Over time 80,000 additional troops were sent into South Waziristan. The rebels responded in classic guerrilla style — by enlarging the battle theatre to include North Waziristan and subsequently Mohmand and Bajaur. The capture and burning of the Sararogha Fort was particularly indicative of the enemy’s ability to organise and undertake operations in battalion-sized formations. This was an important milestone indicating that a guerrilla movement, in a matter of six bungled years, had come of age.

More recently in Bajaur, the Taliban have demonstrated the capability to beat back a frontal assault. In Al Jazeera’s documentary ‘Pakistan’s War on the Frontline’, tanks and infantry of the 63rd FF regiment are seen retreating in panic after encountering Taliban fire. The reporter Rageh Omar describes the Pakistani tank commander as “quite shaken”. Ominously, the footage shows Lashkar-i-Zil’s sophisticated work — trench and tunnel networks and bunkers that are largely beyond the reach of the Pakistani military’s limited ‘hard target’ capability.

According to Pakistani writer Ahmed Rashid, it was military blunders that convinced the Americans in 2006 to intervene with more drone and missile attacks to assist a beleaguered military that was now largely hunkered in its bases and cantonments (with the exception of Bajaur). With its men losing morale and its (as well as Nato’s) hardware being captured or destroyed by the Taliban, the fourth blunder was to enter into a series of ‘peace deals’ with groups of highly organised and armed Islamist rebels.American commentator Bill Roggio learnt of the terms of the truce from an anonymous US intelligence source. Writing in the Long War Journal in 2006, he likens it to an instrument of surrender: the military was to evacuate Waziristan after handing over all seized weapons and equipment. An unknown quantity of money was also transferred to the Taliban.

Some 130 Al Qaeda members were released from Pakistani prisons and allowed to remain in what the truce referred to as the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan for the governance of which, the document mentions, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have set up a ‘Mujahideen Shura’. Pakistani officials arriving at the soccer field for the signing were frisked for weapons by armed Taliban as Al Qaeda’s black flag, the Al Rayah, hung over the scoreboard of the stadium.

Referring to the Swat deal Hasan Askari Rizvi, professor of political science, terms it as “co-opting the Taliban as an acceptable alternative to state governance or at best making them partners with the state, instead of subjects of the state”.So the question once again is: could we have played the hand we were dealt any better? I will leave this for the reader to judge.

Courtesy: DAWN