Simon Hardy
The Pakistani military offensive targeting Taliban forces has seen widespread death and destruction, reports Simon Hardy, and threatens to tear the country apart on behalf of the US
Many of the world’s most powerful armies have been waging the “war on terror” for eight years. Today they are no closer to winning than they were after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Despite Washington’s administration change, the message is clear – the US will stop at nothing to exterminate anyone it considers Taliban or Al-Qaeda.
Previously, people talked about the Afghan war, but now there is a new phrase used by US generals and politicians – “Afpak”. Today, the war in Afghanistan is intricately bound up with Pakistan. Pakistan has moved from being auxiliary supporters of the US war effort straight to the front line.
There is also a history of cultural and ethnic tensions between the provinces of Pakistan and the Islamabad and Punjabi dominated centre. The Pakistani military invasion of South Waziristan is just the latest in a long series of campaigns being waged to try and pacify regions in rebellion against the central government: first the North West Frontier Province, then Baluchistan, and now South Waziristan. The government is using the war on terror to settle old scores with different tribes, many who share linguistic and cultural ties to eastern Afghanistan.
Hilary Clinton’s recent visit to Pakistan coincided with the South Waziristan offensive. The day that she arrived, a massive bomb exploded in a marketplace in Peshawar, killing100 people, a reminder from the terrorists that their tentacles reach deep across the country. Clinton was there to reassure President Asif Ali Zardari that the US has Pakistan’s best intentions at heart, while also applying the necessary pressure to get more results.
Pakistan first
The new Kerry-Luger bill has caused some serious tensions between the US and Pakistan. The bill (part sponsored by Democrat John Kerry) promises $7 billion for Pakistan over the next five years but the conditions attached have caused outrage among politicians in Islamabad, claiming that it undermines Pakistani sovereignty.
To get the money, the government is required to up the ante against proscribed terrorist organisations, like Lashkar-e-Taiba, taking more measures against their operations and members.
The ideological drive behind the bill is the principle of “Pakistan first”. The logic goes like this: first we deal with the Pakistani militants; then we can win the war in Afghanistan.
To Pakistanis, it is obvious that the US could not beat its chosen enemy in the war across the border, so now it is arming its regional ally into opening up a second front for them. If the US military cannot win in the White Mountains and the plains of Helmand, then how can the Pakistani military hope to do so in South Waziristan?
Since mid-October, 28,000 Pakistani military personnel, supported by fighter bombers, artillery and all kinds of armour, have continued an offensive in South Waziristan. It is clear from reports that the fighting, town by town and village to village, has resulted in widespread devastation and destruction.
Kotkai, home to one of the Taliban leaders, was almost destroyed after intense fighting. Al Jazeera TV showed footage of desperate survivors, picking through the rubble of their homes. The United Nations says that over 150,000 refugees have now fled the region in the wake of the offensive.
And the role of the US military in all of this? “We’ve put military assistance to Pakistan on a wartime footing,” said Lt. Col. Mark Wright, as the fighting got under way. That war footing is what is angering so many Pakistanis.
Predator drones
During her visit, Clinton attended several public meetings with students and women, as well as TV debates. At one of these, a woman enquired about the use of unpiloted US Predator drones, which assassinated high-level Taliban leaders, as well as slaughter innocent people at weddings and other non-terrorist activities.
The woman described these drones as carrying out “executions without trial”, effectively assassinating terrorist suspects. Much of the reconnaissance, which comes from informants run by CIA networks, is inaccurate, sometimes coloured by personal animosity. Clinton, of course, refused to discuss the drones, or the CIA, or the tactics of the US military and espionage network with its claws deep in Pakistan.
Sana Bucha of Geo TV said: “Your war not our war. You had one 9/11. We are having daily 9/11s in Pakistan.”
And the daily 9/11s will keep on happening. The people of Kotkai have learned that the hard way. The problem facing the US and Pakistani governments is that the border region with Afghanistan is fairly porous with many tribes and villagers of different ethnic groups and languages living there, most of them peasants and farmers living off the land.
Many of them support the armed militias because they see them as defending their land from invaders, defending their farms and culture from outsiders. Some are committed Islamists, but many are not. However, if the Islamists are the ones fighting and dying to liberate their land from the military, then they support them.
This war will not end well for Zadari or US President Barack Obama, who has repeatedly referred to Afghanistan and Pakistan as the “good war”. In the same way that the US was forced out to start carpet bombing Laos when it was losing the Vietnam war, this recent push in Afghanistan is not a sign of strength, but one of desperation.