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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| More Details About the Fighting in Waziristan |
| 2004-03-29 |
| .... Initially, the Government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf deployed mainly para-military forces, but of late, more and more regular troops have joined. This is partly under US pressure and partly on their own volition after the two attempts to assassinate Musharraf last year. The investigation into the assassination attempts has not made much progress except to identify the two suicide bombers who participated in the second attempt. The Pakistani authorities seem to suspect that the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) carried out the unsuccessful attempts at the instance of Al Qaeda. In a recent statement, Musharraf has claimed that the investigation so far has turned the needle of suspicion on an absconding Libyan member of Al Qaeda. .... While there is no common military command and control, there is definitely a common intelligence command and control. The intelligence component of the hunt is led by the National Security Agency (NSA), the technical intelligence (TECHINT) agency of the US, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the USA’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Pakistani officials themselves, while vehemently denying the presence of any Western troops in their territory, are admitting the presence of US intelligence officers in South Waziristan, where the brunt of the operation from the Pakistani side has been concentrated. They give the total number of US intelligence officers attached to their military units as about a dozen, but independent reports say many more are attached. The flow of human intelligence (HUMINT) has been very poor due to the following reasons: Lack of a well-trained professional police in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), of which South Waziristan is a part. In counter-terrorism operations, much of HUMINT comes from the police which has its ears closer to the ground than the Army and has better relations with the community than the Army. The hunt for bin Laden and other Al Qaeda dregs in this area does not have the benefit of such police back-up. While the Army units deployed in the area consist largely of recruits from outside FATA, the para-military units consist largely of local recruits, whose sympathies are with the local tribal communities. The local terrain offers very little scope for covert operations by intelligence agencies and special forces. The kind of unnoticed and unannounced operations that one can launch in built-up cities such as Karachi or Peshawar or elsewhere, one cannot in South Waziristan or anywhere else in the FATA. Even for TECHINT, the American as well as the Pakistani operatives have to considerably depend on local recruits for the translation of intercepted messages and conversations, which are often in the various dialects of the Pashto language spoken locally as well in the languages and dialects of the Uzbecks, the Chechens etc. This affects the accuracy of the translation. If bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri are hiding in the South Waziristan area as is generally speculated about, there has to be a sizable number of Arabs—mainly Saudis, Yemenis and Egyptians—meant for their protection from the so-called 055 Brigade of Al Qaeda in the area. There are so far no reports of the presence of such a large number of Arabs in that area. According to available information, the foreigners present there (about 100, but Pakistani officials say 400) are mainly Chechens led by one Daniar, Uzbecks, led by Tahir Yuldesh, head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and Uighurs from the Xinjiang province of China and the Central Asian Republics. Amongst the local tribal chiefs, Nek Mohammad, Sharif Khan, Nur Islam, Maulvi Abbas and Maulvi Aziz, have been in the forefront of the anti-Pakistani and anti-US resistance. While the Arabs of Al Qaeda, particularly those meant for the protection of bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri, have been discouraged by their supervisors from marrying local women, many of the Chechens, Uzbecks and Uighurs have married local women and produced children. The local tribals do not look upon them as foreigners. Instead, they look upon them as their own and are not prepared to co-operate with the Pakistani forces by handing them over. .... The Pakistani component of the operation has passed through the following stages: In the first stage, it was directed against specific tribals suspected of giving shelter to the dregs of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In the second, it was directed against tribal chiefs who were not co-operating with the security forces in their hunt for foreign terrorists. In the third and present stage, it is directed against the foreign terrorists, the local tribals giving them shelter as well as against the non-co-operative tribal chiefs. Instead of creating a divide between the foreign terrorists and the locals, the high-minded manner in which the Pakistanis have been carrying out their operations has resulted in further strengthening the bonds of solidarity amongst the terrorists and their local supporters. There have been ferocious attacks on the Pakistani security forces, resulting in heavy casualties. The official figures of fatal casualties since March 16 are 15 members of the security forces and 26 suspected terrorists. Only two of the dead bodies of the suspected terrorists have been recovered, both Chechens. On the contrary, according to the local observers, the security forces have suffered more fatal casualties than the terrorists and their supporters. Moreover, at least 20 members of the security forces and some civilian officials have been taken hostage by the tribals. The ferocity of the recent tribal (not Al Qaeda as claimed by the Pakistani officials) attacks on the security forces led to an interpretation by Musharraf himself as indicating that a high-value target was sought to be protected by them. While he himself did not name Al-Zawahiri as such a target, junior officials started speculating, reportedly on the basis of HUMINT, that the target being protected must be Al-Zawahiri after an incident in which a group of about 50 heavily-armed men, in an almost suicide bid, escorted an armor-plated vehicle out of a cordon thrown by the security forces. It is claimed that many of them died in a diversionary exchange of fire with the security forces. Taking advantage of this, the vehicle managed to pass through the cordon without being intercepted, but subsequently crashed against a wall and its occupants managed to escape after abandoning it. The local speculation that Al-Zawahiri was one of the occupants has not been corroborated so far. The picture emerging from South Waziristan continues to be as confusing as ever. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |