..the Pak offensive against Qaeda in Pakistain and the Pak Taliban in North Wazoo. The name refers to the sword of the Prophet (PTUI!)...
has been speculated about for a while. On occasion, the military has suggested that it will be an open-ended operation, with counter-insurgency in North
Wazoo morphing into counterterrorism operations in the cities. However,denial ain't just a river in Egypt...
Gen Raheel Sharif
..Pak chief of army staff, meaning he pulls the strings on the Nawaz Sharif puppet to make it dance and sing and not do much at all....
’s comments to the Formation Commanders’ Conference on Thursday would appear to suggest that the military has a definite timeline in mind when it comes to the conclusion of Zarb-e-Azb -- and that the end of the operation may only be months away. If the operation does come to a close soon, it would be a milestone in Pakistain’s fight against militancy. While other major operations have been fought in the past -- in Swat
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
and South Waziristan in particular -- North Waziristan, both for operational reasons and for those of perception, had come to be regarded as a kind of final frontier: wresting North Waziristan away from hard boyz and re-establishing the state’s writ in the agency would signal a return to a more internally secure Pakistain. The bravery and sacrifices of the soldiers who have fought in Zarb-e-Azb deserve the highest praise.
Yet, great challenges remain in the fight against militancy. While the banned TTP and affiliated groups may be decimated, the full spectrum of militancy continues to pose significant threats. There is also, beyond military operations and counterterrorism actions, the more complicated tasks of counter-extremism and de-radicalisation. Therefore, the end of Zarb-e-Azb, necessary as it may be, should bring with it some clarity and direction in the next phase of the long war. The National Action Plan may have a great deal of merit but it appears to have been virtually abandoned by both the political and military leaderships. In any case, NAP does not provide a phased approach, one that creates a road map in the post-Zarb-e-Azb security situation. Unhappily, if the absence of a declared road map is worrying enough, the means to create one is even more in doubt at the moment. From Zarb-e-Azb, the next logical step was to tackle the bully boy infrastructure in Punjab
1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots....
-- and the infrastructure of all bully boys, not just those who have taken up arms against Pakistain. But the government does not appear to regard militancy in Punjab as a serious matter, while the security establishment seems uninterested in shutting down anti-India bully boy groups that are based in the province but that have spread their networks across the country. Surely, the nation’s security demands a less myopic approach.