If an offensive goes ahead, Pakistan’s military will be unable to take full control of North Waziristan, a ruggedly mountainous zone slightly larger than the US state of Rhode Island, said Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. And no offensive will significantly weaken the militant groups based in North Waziristan unless US and Afghan forces are able to block the mountainous border and prevent the escape of militant fight
ers into Afghanistan, Gul told a February 10 conference sponsored by the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, and moderated by its director, Shuja Nawaz. The talks initiated by the Nawaz government with TTP, are likely meant to create political space for a military operation, said Arif Ansar, the chief analyst and CEO of PoliTact, a Washington-area strategic consulting firm.

Summary

While Pakistan’s government and its Taliban movement formally have started peace talks, events there suggest that the coming months may as likely bring a Pakistani military offensive, long sought by the United States, against the country’s biggest territorial stronghold of the Taliban and other militant groups. In late January, the Pakistani military and the Taliban traded their heaviest attacks on each other in recent months, many of them around that stronghold, the district of North Waziristan.

Surgical strikes informed by good intelligence may be able to weaken the Taliban’s leadership, Gul said. On the night of January 20, Pakistan’s air force attacked villages in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan, the second time in a month that Pakistan has launched such air strikes. Those strikes have come as the United States effectively has suspended (since December 25) its campaign of missile attacks from remotely piloted drones, a campaign that that overwhelmingly has targeted militant groups in North Waziristan.

As Gul spoke in Washington, Taliban leaders in North Waziristan hosted a team of mediators for talks with the government that began in earnest this week. Those negotiations are not likely to bring a real reconciliation between the two, but may help the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif demonstrate to Pakistanis that it seriously attempted peacemaking before any eventual military assault, said Arif Ansar.

Sharif won election in last year promising to favor negotiations, rather than military attacks, in an effort to halt the Taliban insurgency of recent years. He faces political pressure against an assault on the Taliban from opposition leader Imran Khan. Khan says the Taliban movement will subside after US forces withdraw this year from their combat role in neighboring Afghanistan.

But the just-started peace talks are likely to underscore the deep political and cultural divide between the government and the Taliban, Gul said. The Taliban demand that Pakistan’s constitution be scrapped and that Islamic sharia law be used to rule the country.

Arif went on to elaborate and emphasize the following strategic calculations:

➢ On the other side of the border, President Karzai is increasingly seeking peace talks and has linked the Bilateral Security Agreement on this. In such a situation, how will Pakistan’s approach against TTP fit with the US withdrawal this year?

➢ Furthermore, as Pakistan exerts military pressure on TTP, will they shift to Afghanistan, as occurred in Swat and other operations in the past, or will they hide with in Pakistan cities and other tribal agencies? And in this context, how will this operation be different than the past ones?

➢ If Taliban do shift to Afghanistan, will the country act against them, or will the border regions become a refuge for TTP, as FATA has become for Afghan Taliban factions? This is already the case in Nuristan and Kunar provinces where the Taliban moved after the Swat operation in 2009, and from where they conduct activities in the settled areas of Pakistan.

➢ Is Pakistan seeking a serious push against TTP or just maneuvering to pressure it towards peace talks? Will the nation also incorporate action against other allied extremist groups? If not, how will these groups and Afghan Taliban react to pressure on TTP? And, has the nation prepared for the possible reaction.

➢ What will be the impact of the approach adopted on the US-Pakistan and Pakistan-India ties?

➢ What lessons can be drawn from the evolution of Al Qaeda and extremist groups in the Middle East and North Africa? The emerging division is increasingly between extremist groups with local agenda, and groups with regional and global ambitions. The intermingling of Arab Spring, war against extremists, Shiite- Sunni tussles, and the global balance of power struggles, has immensely complicated the situation, and is weakening the nation-state in these regions.

➢ After the potential inclusion of Iran in the Geneva II talks over Syria, will Iran also become a part of the formal talks on Afghanistan? In essence, what will be the impact of the flux in the balance of power in Middle East on South Asia?

Click on the link to get the Script for the event.

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 This Vantage Point Analysis explores scenarios for the next phase of the war against terrorism in Pakistan and elsewhere. 

Analysis

South Punjab is home to four key militant outfits: the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Maulana Masud Azhar’s Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). It is widely believed that between 5,000 and 9,000 young men from South Punjab are fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and Waziristan. The region has become critical to the recruitment, training and logistical support for terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In fact, according to media reports, Jihadist veterans in Southern Punjab are actively involved in supplying manpower and carrying out activities planned and funded predominantly by the Al-Qaeda.

Lahore has been a prime target and terrorists have executed a number of attacks there. In March 2008, a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team was successfully targeted, causing severe damage to cricket in Pakistan. LeJ was widely believed to behind this. Aqeel, the chief culprit in the GHQ attack, was involved with the same group. LeJ also stands accused of carrying out several attacks in India, including the daring one on Parliament in 2001. Ajmal Qasab, the sole surviving terrorist involved in the Mumbai attacks, is believed to belong to LeT and hales from Faridkot Village, in the Okara District of South Punjab.

The conventional wisdom which says that once the US exits from Afghanistan, the extremists in Pakistan will simply disband and live in peace is fast losing validity. We at PoliTact maintain, on the contrary, that Pakistani extremists, Taliban militants and the Punjabi Jihadists are not going anywhere. Only one simple fact is required to prove this: the Punjabi Jihadist, like the Pakistani Taliban, has lost faith in the Pakistani army. The result: an increasing number of attacks on civilian and military targets across the country. Some examples: the killing of former ISI officer Khaled Khwaja and the abduction of Colonel Imam by a group of Punjabi Taliban known as the “Asian Tigers.” The North Waziristan operation might very well succeed in destroying any residual trust the Afghan Taliban might still feel regarding the Pakistani Army. If that happens, the focus of the war could dramatically shift from Afghanistan to Pakistan.

One reason why many Pakistanis might oppose a military action in Southern Punjab is the region’s Jihadist role in Kashmir. Pakistan has traditionally used Jihadism in Kashmir, as did the US during the Afghan war of the 80s, as a strategic option and Southern Punjab has played an important role in this. Religious organizations in Southern Punjab have developed a highly elaborate system for recruiting and training youth for participation in the Kashmir’s freedom movement. Extremism flourishes in the poverty-stricken suburbs of South Punjab.

A South Waziristan-styled operation will obviously not be feasible in densely populated South Punjab; the use of sledgehammer tactics to crush militancy will most likely lead to intolerable collateral damage, followed in turn by highly unpleasant consequences. Moreover, Southern Punjab is home to Punjabis and opening up a new war front in the area could inflict further damage on the already tarnished reputation of the Pakistani military. Thus, Pakistan needs to come up with a new approach to fighting extremism and militancy there.

If these new fronts open in the manner we anticipate, the fissures within the Pakistan army will grow. The alienation of the Pashtun and Punjabi elements in the military will make it impossible to avoid an adverse outcome for the Pakistani state. The emerging collaboration between TTP and Punjabi Taliban of Southern Punjab mean that one can’t end the war simply by driving terrorists out of the tribal areas and that Pakistan must prepare itself to fight on several fronts. Similarly, there is increasing evidence of collusion between international terrorists and local extremists in the region, which is forcing the war against extremism in to additional areas and countries and reinforcing the fact that this war is not limited to AfPak region alone. The New York Times disclosed yesterday General Petraeus signed a secret order in late 2009, increasing covert operations to counter militants and other threats across the region. The order authorizes Special Operations forces to operate in both allied and hostile nations in the Mideast, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa.

Obviously, the militarization of the society, caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has yet to be fully actualized. We believe that the US departure from the region, if and when it happens, will not mark the end of the process. This is just like the results of the Afghan Jihad of the 80s are still manifesting in the region, and the consequences of what is occurring now will take many years to fully emerge.

Faced with these scenarios, the US exit strategy has focused on weakening the local and global extremists – but without much success in addressing the causes which leads them to adopt extreme ideologies. Add to this the worsening crisis in Iran and the Horn of Africa and it appears that the region is heading towards a chaos, which will take decades before any semblance of order finally emerges.

In South Asia, as well as in many other parts of the world, there is no one-to-one match between a nation and a state and many irredentist claims exist. It seems to us that if events continue on their present trajectory, the region will gradually revert to the condition it was in prior to the establishment of nation-states. The next phase of the war against extremism seems willing to cross over borders and not be restricted by the nation-state classification. The unpopular and often undemocratic governments of these regions will be caught in the middle of this fight between extremists and the Coalition of the Willing, with both causing tremendous pressure on the often ineffective and corrupt governments.

These tensions are inadvertently weakening the supporting structures and institutions of the nation-state system, as we are in seeing in the case of Pakistan. If the nation-state based order that has existed since the end of World War II was to go, and if history is any lesson, religion and tribalism will perhaps prove to be the primary forces holding society together in these regions. Which brand and faction of religion, is a different question. PoliTact will be presenting a number of emerging patterns associated with the war against terrorism, in its soon to be released GIPSEE (Global Intelligence, Political, Security and Economic Estimate) Forecast.

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