Pakistan has accepted short-term defeat and risked the wrath of its US allies for long-term strategic gains by giving in to militant tribesmen backing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, an analyst said yesterday.
"It is a tactical retreat," retired army general Talat Masood said of the amnesty granted to five hardcore tribal fighters who have been supporting up to 600 mainly Chechen and Uzbek fighters linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
PHOTO: AP
"The Pakistani authorities did not want military confrontation because they would not be achieving their political objectives: to open up the tribal areas, make it more transparent and establish the writ of the state," he said.
"For that you need the cooperation of the tribes there, and you also want continuous access so that it doesn't turn again into a sanctuary for terrorists or narcotics peddlars," he said.
The amnesties were granted by Pakistan's military in an elaborate ceremony in a remote village in Pakistan's semi-autonomous northwest tribal region on the border with Afghanistan on Saturday.
The tribesmen, led by Nek Mohammad, a former Taliban commander from a hardcore Pashtun subtribe, had been the target of army offensives including a disastrous 12-day operation last month. They have topped a government wanted list since January.
Many of the foreign fighters they have been sheltering are believed to have been slipping across the border to kill US and Afghan targets in Afghanistan over the past year.
Under the agreement between the rebel tribesmen and Pakistani authorities, they will be allowed to stay in the region if they sign pledges to lay down their arms and cease armed activities.
Masood said that bringing the tribesmen on side was critical to redressing what has been the Pakistani army's Achilles' heel: lack of human intelligence.
"The most important thing is establishing human intelligence," he said. "The objective is to ... ensure that the tribes are unable to indulge in activities against the interests of the state and to bring them closer to mainstream politics, integrate them with the rest of the country."
US forces in Afghanistan, who have been trying to seal the border against militants infiltrating from Pakistani sanctuaries to attack aid workers, troops and government targets, are "livid" at the deal, according to Western diplomats.
"These Chechens and Uzbeks are not innocent farmers left over from the mujahidin wars [against Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers in the 1980s] who've got stranded in the region and married local girls," an Islamabad-based diplomat said.
"They've been running over the border killing people. Nek Mohammad and his men have been supplying them arms, giving them sanctuary. Nek Mohammad is probably indirectly responsible for hundreds of deaths in Afghanistan," the diplomat said.
Masood said the US military was likely to be "uncertain" about the deal.
"Because they would not know as to how it would ultimately figure out, but from a Pakistani perspective I think it has been a good agreement," he said.
Pakistani forces had probably learnt from the failures of the US military's "guns blazing" approach in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I think they would have been inspired by the US approach to the operation in both Afghanistan and Iraq," Masood said. "I think they are trying to now use the political instrument for achieving their goals rather than using the military as the centerpiece."
Masood said a key difference between the US and the Pakistani military's approaches was that the Pakistanis were operating on home turf.
"Pakistan is operating in its own territory, whereas the US [is] operating in someone else's territory, so they [can't] use the same approach," he said.
Pakistan's largest-ever offensive against al-Qaeda-linked fighters last month failed to capture any significant militant leaders but resulted in the deaths of at least 46 troops, 15 civilians and 63 militants.
Scores of homes were also destroyed, and anti-military resentment spread among the 4 million tribesmen who live in the seven fiercely independent tribal districts hugging the border.
"The military operation was a failure. But they're turning that military setback into something at least politically acceptable," Masood said.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot