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| India-Pakistan |
| What's really going on in Waziristan, FATA |
| 2006-05-01 |
| Against the background of growing public concern that Pakistan is losing out to a process of Talibanisation of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), military officials in Miranshah, North Waziristan, have told a team of foreign journalists that Pakistan has full control of the agency and that the “Talibanisation” of the area is a thing of the past. However, just two days earlier, President Pervez Musharraf had actually said that, far from being countered effectively, Talibanisation was spreading into other areas of the country. Now the foreign media has been told that the army has killed 324 militants over the past nine months in 39 major operations since July 2005. The military official who briefed the foreign media claimed that 142 militants have been captured, and 76 foreign militants and 56 soldiers killed in this period. But this is at variance with the figure quoted by the foreign minister on BBC three days ago in which he said, in response to the mantra of the international community to “do more”, that nearly 600 soldiers and para-military men had lost their lives at the hands of terrorists and Taliban forces in Waziristan. In Miranshah alone, said the ISPR, there were 1,500 pro-Taliban militants in March, out of which the army had killed 145 militants, including 23 foreigners. The death of a “senior Al Qaeda operative and explosives expert, Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah, indicted in the United States over the 1998 twin embassy bombings in east Africa”, has also been claimed, although it is admitted that “the body of the suspect has never been found”. According to the military spokesman in Miranshah, “some 31,000 regular troops and 14,000 paramilitary soldiers are deployed in North Waziristan”. According to the same spokesman, 80 percent of the local population is “sitting on the fence” and not openly siding with the government. The spokesman could have added that this was so because 150 of the local leaders who supported the government had been put to death by the Taliban and others were being slaughtered daily on charges of spying for the Americans. The rest of Pakistan is also “sitting on the fence” because of the way the government has handled the trouble in Waziristan. Sealed off from normal reporting because the army didn’t allow local journalists to go to the area, the public has been vulnerable to the “denial” propaganda of the MMA, the clerical alliance in power in the NWFP, and the combined opposition in parliament which sees the Waziristan trouble as a chink in the armour of the Musharraf regime. The fact is that the government has been hurt by its policy of not allowing local journalists to report from the tribal areas. The area was declared out of bounds, not because the government was doing anything illegal there but because it steadily botched operations it undertook in the earlier phase. There was a difference of opinion between two men who handled the operations: the Peshawar corps commander and the NWFP governor. This resulted in many of the early operations going wrong and ending in the deaths of Pakistani soldiers. There was also some evidence of lack of resolve and conviction among those who conceived and led these operations, especially with regard to the terms of surrender of some of the militant leaders and the policy of offering massive bribes to some others. Was the policy of disallowing local journalists to report and to prevent the flaws from being made public correct? It is now clear that it was not. Much of the Talibanisation was spread by the very militants who were handed out massive bribes. Had the national press been around this policy would not have gone on till it was too late. In this vacuum of information, the version of facts about Waziristan put out by the clergy became the burden of reportage on the issue. Those from among the NWFP politicians who dared to speak out lived in fear of being attacked; and journalists who snuck into the area gathered hair-raising facts about the doings and undoings of the Taliban that would have strengthened the government’s position if they had been allowed to be aired. But such sneaky reportage was not trusted and not published. The result is that now no one believes what the government says about Waziristan. Once again it has been deemed more important to “satisfy” the foreign press. The reason for this is easily understood. The pressure of making a clean breast on Waziristan comes from the top and can’t be resisted, and Pakistan has to tell the world that it is trying its best against Al Qaeda. Back home, no one has taken another look at the policy of keeping the national press off the scent of developments in the affected areas. In the environment created by this policy, the militants have been kidnapping and killing the random journalists operating there without the support of fellow-professionals. Had the press corps been allowed in, it would have taken a stand against the terrorists and strengthened the government’s hand despite the normal expectation of critical coverage. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |