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| India-Pakistan |
| Militants across country find sanctuary in FATA |
| 2007-09-30 |
| A new UN report says 80 percent of suicide bombers in Afghanistan came from the Waziristan agencies. Reforms doing a little in FATA: According to an analysis by Hassan Abbas in Terrorism Monitor, a publication of the Jamestown Foundation, while the Pakistan government has offered to introduce reforms in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA), little has been done. Political agents continue to dole out funds to handpicked people, often in an attempt to buy peace. The $750 million worth of US aid for development in FATA is in the pipeline, but there is no publicly known strategy in place on how to channel the funds, leading to apprehensions and uncertainty. The Taliban and their sympathisers are becoming entrenched in the region and aggressively expanding their influence and operations. The military impasse is exacerbated by the combination of President General Pervez Musharraf’s political predicament and declining public support, a significant rise in suicide attacks targeting the army and the reluctance of soldiers deputed in the area to engage tribal gangs. According to Abbas, many militants associated with local Pakistani militant groups have moved to FATA to benefit from the sanctuary available. The election season is descending upon Pakistan and Musharraf’s survival prospects are diminishing. This scenario has consequences for Pakistan’s policy in the FATA region, which will predictably revert to “peace deals” in the short-term, leading to a lowering of the number of military checkpoints in the area. The report says this will help Talibanisation in the region and provide more opportunities to the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to indirectly support some Taliban commanders sympathetic to Pakistan’s objectives. Overall, this will likely reduce trouble in Islamabad city, but the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area will remain on fire. The author lists as “important variables” the poor coordination between the Pakistan army and NATO/ISAF, Hamid Karzai’s failure to make Afghanistan a functional state and the abundance of drug money in southern Afghanistan. |
| Posted by:Fred |