Tribal leaders sought Monday to broker a peaceful outcome to the six-day battle between Pakistani troops and Islamic militants in a remote area near Afghanistan, and the army sought to determine whether prominent al Qaeda figures were among those killed or captured in the fighting. Security officials, meanwhile, said they had discovered a 1.2-mile-long tunnel that could have served as an escape route for senior al Qaeda fugitives when the fighting erupted last Tuesday, although a military spokesman later played down that possibility.
| More yap-yap + tunnel = escape opportunity. |
As army and paramilitary troops held their fire, the Associated Press reported, 18 tribal leaders carrying a white flag entered the battle zone Monday morning for talks with local tribesmen who have joined forces with foreign al Qaeda fighters in the barren hills of South Waziristan, just a few miles from the Afghan border. The tribal leaders were conveying government demands for the freeing of 12 paramilitary fighters and two civilians, the expulsion of foreign militants and the hand-over of local tribesmen who had fought with the foreign militants in the fortified mud-brick compounds that are the focus of the military operation. But Brig. Mahmood Shah, head of security for the semi-autonomous tribal regions that line the border with Afghanistan, told reporters in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, that "in light of past experience, we are not very hopeful" about the prospects for the talks, according to the AP.
| That's an assertion they're not stupid... |
As the negotiations were beginning, fighters with rocket-propelled grenades ambushed an army convoy supporting the operation to flush out the rebels from their strongholds west of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, according to Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the chief military spokesman. Sultan said he could not provide casualty figures, but the Reuters news agency reported that 12 soldiers were killed and 22 wounded.
Senior officials said Sunday that the remains of six rebels killed in the recent fighting had been taken to a military hospital in Rawalpindi near here and that DNA samples would be taken to learn whether any of them were significant al Qaeda figures. "They certainly don't look like Pakistanis; they're all foreigners," said a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition he not be named. The official added that Zawahiri, a stout, bearded Egyptian whose picture has been broadcast around the world, did not appear to be among them. "The guess is they are all Chechens or Uzbeks, but DNA tests are being conducted." The official added that the government was eager to emphasize the involvement of foreign fighters to counter accusations by Islamic hard-liners that the army is targeting Pakistanis in the tribal areas. To that end, state-run television aired mortuary footage of five of the dead fighters, who appeared to be in their late twenties. The sixth body was not shown because it had begun to decompose, although it was unlikely to be that of Zawahiri, a senior security official said on condition of anonymity.
In addition to conducting DNA tests, security officials are interrogating roughly 100 captured rebels -- said to include militants from Chechnya, Uzbekistan and some Arab countries -- for information on the whereabouts of Zawahiri or bin Laden. A Pakistani military intelligence official said on condition of anonymity Sunday that about 20 of the captives were of particular interest. A team of U.S. intelligence personnel -- in addition to the 18 who are assisting the army in its operations in South Waziristan -- is participating in their interrogation. "We may get vital insight into the guerrilla operation being launched against the U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan," another intelligence official said. "We will also know for sure if Ayman or Osama ever operated from this area."
Shah, the security chief for the tribal regions, left open the possibility that Zawahiri or other prominent fugitives could have escaped through a tunnel that linked the homes of two local tribesmen in the village of Kaloosha -- Nek Mohammed and Sharif Khan -- who were accused of taking up arms with the foreign fighters. Shah told reporters that the tunnel opened onto a dry streambed near the border and "may have been used at the start of the operation." Sultan said later that the tunnel probably could not have been an escape route because it ended just a few feet outside the wall of Mohammed's compound and was well inside the cordon that military forces threw up around the area at the start of the operation. He described it as a shallow "communication tunnel" that was part of the rebels' defenses. There was no word Monday night on the outcome of the negotiations between the tribal leaders and the rebels. "We don't want to be seen as rash," said a senior Pakistani military official. "At the same time," he added, "it is a difficult proposition because we want our men freed without being seen as yielding any ground to the terrorists." |