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| Afghanistan |
| Pakistan Adopting a Tough Old Tactic to Flush Out Qaeda |
| 2004-01-31 |
| At the start of the month, Pakistan massed several thousand troops in and around the town of Wana, near the country's mountainous border with Afghanistan. Using a harsh century-old British method, officials handed local tribal elders a list and issued an ultimatum. If 72 men wanted for sheltering Al Qaeda were not produced, they said, the Pakistani Army would punish the tribe as a group, demolishing houses, withdrawing funds and even detaining tribe members. Several days later, several thousand tribal elders held a jirga, or council, and agreed to raise a force of their own to find the wanted men. In the last two weeks, the tribes have handed over 42 of them. Tribal members, meanwhile, have bulldozed and dynamited the homes of eight men who refused to surrender. The most wanted fugitives, including foreign Qaeda members, remain at large, although as an added incentive, Pakistani officials have promised not to hand over any fugitive Pakistanis to the United States. American officials declined to comment on the policy, but Pakistani officials hope the British method, combined with the American-financed building of roads and schools, will show results. "There is this age-old system of collective responsibility," said Lt. Gen. Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, the governor of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and a key supporter of the new approach. "Tribes are supposed to help the government." Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the tribal areas that span both sides of the border have proved to be a redoubt for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere in the area's inaccessible crags. Insurgents have used the border area, home to smugglers and guerrillas for centuries, as a base to carry out cross-border attacks that have killed or wounded dozens of American soldiers. Responding to American pressure, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, deployed soldiers in the tribal areas for the first time in the country's history in the spring of 2002. That provoked bitter protests from hard-line Islamic political parties that won sweeping support in and around the tribal areas in elections that October. All told, Pakistani soldiers and police officers have captured more than 500 suspected Qaeda members, most of them low-level fighters caught fleeing Afghanistan in 2002. More than 70,000 Pakistani soldiers are now deployed in the tribal areas, but over the last year capturing fighters has proved more difficult. Suspected Taliban fighters have killed six Pakistani soldiers carrying out raids in the tribal areas since August. Two Pakistanis were killed by American fire on the border. A senior Pakistani intelligence official said Pakistan has had no reports since 2002 that Mr. bin Laden has been in South Waziristan, the tribal agency whose main town is Wana. Pakistani officials said they would never allow American forces into Pakistan, but conceded that they had been under intense American pressure to act in the tribal areas. They said they hoped the new approach would prove fruitful. There is little expectation that the tribes would abruptly hand over Mr. bin Laden. Instead,the hope is to gradually make the area less hospitable for the Qaeda leader and his backers. Mr. bin Laden is believed to have strong popular support in the tribal areas, the most |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #12 I like the part about the tribal members bulldozing and dynamiting the houses of the eight men that refused to surrender. A nice touch, obviously inspired from the Israeli Playbook. Heh heh. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2004-1-31 11:20:47 PM |
| #11 4thInfVet - I agree, only using napalm is now a "war crime". I still think we need to deliver a few hundred loads - most on the Pak/Afghan border, the rest on a certain building in Brussels. We know the GPS coordinates. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-1-31 6:21:13 PM |
| #10 Those "inaccessible crags" need a few hundred thousand tons of napalm delivered into them. Give the arab mutts something to think about as they chat on their sat phones. And the 'Spring Offensive' is gonna be entertaining, oh yeah. Maybe the 4th should come home via iran and afghanistan. |
| Posted by: 4thInfVet 2004-1-31 11:42:29 AM |
| #9 How about a missile defense system for our new friends the Indians? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-1-31 11:08:11 AM |
| #8 Beginning to look like Perv got a message - we want Binny by summertime. Or else what, I wonder ? What 'pressure' are we using ? |
| Posted by: Anonynoony 2004-1-31 10:52:40 AM |
| #7 Pakistan Adopting a Tough Old Tactic to Flush Out Qaeda New York Times reporters appear to take considerable pleasure in flaunting their ignorance. This tactic is tough by British, but not by Pakistani standards. Massacre and exile were some of the tactics used by kingdoms on the Indian subcontinent before the British came on the scene. The Arab conquest of what is now Pakistan was certainly accompanied by both tactics on a large scale. When Syria's Hafez Assad bombed Hama and Iraq's Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds, they were merely continuing an ancient Muslim tradition. British tactics were mild. When Musharraf starts using Muslim tactics, we'll know he's serious about rooting out al Qaeda. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-1-31 10:24:24 AM |
| #6 In this case it shows that it's from the nytimes.com. Too funny! |
| Posted by: Analog Roam 2004-1-31 9:59:33 AM |
| #5 Phil_b, try putting your cursor over the title and look down at the bar at the bottom of the page. In this case it shows that it's from the nytimes.com. Works for me. If you 'click' on the title you'll get the original unedited article. That is, of course, if it wasn't posted by a troll. |
| Posted by: Gasse Katze 2004-1-31 8:27:45 AM |
| #4 "Our tribes will rise against them," he said. "We don’t like the Americans, and there will be a fight." Kinda reminds me of that mythical arab street thingee. |
| Posted by: Evert Visser 2004-1-31 7:05:24 AM |
| #3 The United States indirectly helped pay for hundreds of hard-line religious schools that produced anti-Soviet fighters. Kinda tenuous, but that was then and this is now. You work down your list of enemies knocking them off one at a time. Strategy 101. "We don’t like the Americans, and there will be a fight." This is like saying you don't like martians. How many Americans have you actually met Mr. Jihadi. And this is a classic piece of leftist it-must-be-someone-elses-fault-think. is the product of decades of government neglect and the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980’s, according to Pakistani analysis. I didn't check the source - BTW there should be Rantburg convention that you state the source of any article. It wouldn't be suprised that this was mainstream media like NYT. God, journalists are morons! |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-1-31 6:17:09 AM |
| #2 Amen, Jon. I couldn't agree more. |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2004-1-31 4:58:07 AM |
| #1 looks like this year is gonna be crunch time for pakmanistan,what with the 'spring offensive' coming up and Musharraf realising his time up if he can't sort his shit hole country out. Guess he must be gutted now his 'country' may fall apart but frankly i don't care as long as they catch Bin-Laden.Be kinda helpfull if India just nuked em. |
| Posted by: Jon Shep U.K 2004-1-31 4:36:44 AM |