Pakistan to extend operations into tribal areas

Sunday Times:

PAKISTAN is to extend its war on the Taliban beyond Swat into the fiercely independent tribal areas bordering Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda leadership are believed to be hiding.

“We’re going to go into Waziristan, all these regions, with army operations,” President Asif Ali Zardari told The Sunday Times in an interview. “Swat is just the start. It’s a larger war to fight.”

He said Pakistan would need billions of pounds in military assistance and aid for up to 1.7m refugees, the biggest movement of people since the country’s split from India in 1947.

To help take on the militants, the Pakistan army is for the first time to accept counterinsurgency training from British and American troops on its own soil.

“We need to develop our capability and we need much more support,” said Zardari. “We need much, much more than the $1 billion [military aid] we’ve been getting, which is nothing. We’ve got 150,000 troops in [the tribal areas] - just the movement of that number would cost $1 billion.”

Pakistan’s army is geared towards conventional warfare against its old enemy India. There have long been concerns in Whitehall and Washington at its ineffectiveness and lack of commitment against militants.

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The army is planning to open new fronts in Waziristan and Darra Adam Khel. Waziristan is the headquarters of the militant Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, led by Baitullah Mehsud, who has been named as the mastermind behind the assassination of Zardari’s wife, the former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

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The Taliban were said to be holding out in Sultan Was, a mountainous valley in Buner. All access to Swat, where the army said a house-to-house search was underway for Taliban leaders in Mingora, was banned.

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The article also discusses the refugee problem caused by the Taliban's attempt to use human shields and the army's heavy handed response to rooting out the Taliban. The government is going to have to deal with the refugees in a humane way while using their absence to destroy Taliban units.

Pushing into the tribal areas is long over due, but the troops are still not demonstrating much skill at counterinsurgency operations. While a small number of US special forces have been added to the training regimen more is needed.