Pakistan embarked on a risky offensive aimed at crushing one of the Taliban's and al Qaeda's main strongholds and initial reports trickling out of the unforgiving region Sunday indicated soldiers were making advances, despite stout resistance from the militants.
[pakistan] Reuters
Men fleeing a military offensive in South Waziristan are checked by police after arriving at a registration point for internally displaced persons in Dera Ismail Khan.
Some 30,000 Pakistani soldiers are moving on the South Waziristan tribal area, where they face as many as 10,000 Pakistani and foreign militants, many of them veterans of battles in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The army has failed in three previous attempts to reassert its control over the area. But officials say a wave of terror attacks that left more than 160 people dead over the past two weeks has stiffened their resolve and there will be no peace deals this time.
The offensive began before dawn Saturday, and the region is closed to reporters. The army said Sunday in a statement that it had lost five soldiers and killed 60 militants, adding that Taliban fighters were "vacating their posts … leaving behind arms and ammunition." Hundreds of thousands of civilians were said to be fleeing South Waziristan; others were trying to find a way out.
"There is a full fledged war-like situation here and we are packing to flee however we can find a way. But there is no safe passage to go out of Waziristan," said Muhammad Nawaz, a 29-year-old shop owner, in a telephone interview from the Taliban-controlled town of Makeen.
The U.S. has pressed for the start of the long-anticipated offensive. It is Pakistan's most ambitious attempt to date to strike at the heart of what officials and analysts describe as a militant nexus linking ethnic Pashtun Taliban fighters from the poverty-stricken mountains of northwestern Pakistan to educated jihadis from the prosperous eastern plains of Punjab province.The Punjabis are of particular concern; they hail from groups once nurtured by Pakistan to fight India, and U.S. officials allege some still have informal links to Pakistan's intelligence services, an allegation Pakistan denies. Analysts say the Taliban could use the Punjabis to launch revenge attacks in the country's cities.
Punjabi militants are said by officials to have played a major role in the bloody two-week stretch that preceded the offensive and illustrated the militants' potential to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan. The Punjabis took the lead in two of the most audacious attacks: an assault last weekend on the country's well-guarded military headquarters and a three-pronged attack on security targets Thursday in the eastern city of Lahore.Regional Violence
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Officials trace the planning for those attacks -- any many more in the past two years -- back to a part of South Waziristan controlled by the Mehsud tribe. That area, which covers almost 1,300 square miles of high mountains and deep valleys, is the target of the offensive
U.S. officials were cautiously optimistic as the offensive got under way this weekend. They fear any further deterioration of the security situation in Pakistan could undermine U.S. and allied efforts to overcome the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, where violence is spiking and American soldiers are dying in record numbers.Yet they are also mindful of Pakistan's limits. Its sizable army is designed to fight tank battles and artillery duels against rival India, not a counterinsurgency campaign in the mountains. In addition, Islamabad prepared for the offensive by renewing peace deals with a handful of other Taliban factions, most of which are focused on battling U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. That means the Waziristan campaign is unlikely to have any immediate effect on the battle for Afghanistan.
But "if it's a blow to al Qaeda, it if takes away one of their sanctuaries, if it makes Pakistan a safe place, than it will be a positive," said a U.S. military official in the region. Pakistani officials say the peace deals improve the odds of success in Waziristan.
The offensive is the fourth major operation against the Taliban in the past 12 months. The first two, in the tribal areas of Bajaur and Mohmand, failed to uproot the Taliban, despite initial claims of success.
But the army has managed to clear the Taliban from much of the Swat Valley after the collapse of a peace deal that had effectively handed the area northwest of Islamabad to the militants. Plans for the Waziristan offensive were announced soon after major fighting in Swat ended.On Sunday, officials and residents said the army was advancing into Waziristan on three fronts, trying to encircle the militants. Battles and skirmishes were reported in or around a handful of towns and villages.
"The army is pushing the Taliban into a blind street -- they don't know from which sides they face the forces," said Saleh Shah, the senator from South Waziristan.
But Mr. Shah said the army and the government needed to make a better effort at aiding refugees fleeing South Waziristan, which is home to about 500,000 people. "There are no proper registration facilities for the refugees with no officially designated camps to accommodate those who have nothing to eat and drink," he said in an interview in Peshawar, the gateway to the tribal areas.
As many as 150,000 people have already fled the region, and officials expect many more to arrive in adjacent regions in the coming days. The U.N. has been stockpiling supplies in the area, but military officials said ahead of the campaign that they would simply give refugees cash payments to pay for housing and food.
Refugees arriving Sunday in the Tank district, east of Waziristan, said they had received nothing and weren't aware that any money was available or how to get it.
"We saw flames everywhere. The jets hurled bombs at mountains, targeting the militants who have taken shelter there," said Ameerullah Mehsud, 37 years old, who trekked 35-kilometers with his family. "I carried my ailing mother on my shoulder … I left my goats, sheep and other animals and blankets and clothes."
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