Pakistan’s army is preparing to launch an assault on the Taliban and al-Qaeda stronghold of South Waziristan as the military fights a rearguard political action against the civilian government over a contentious US$7.5 billion US aid package.
The Waziristan operation is expected to target the Taliban network of Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone strike last August, as well as thousands of Uzbek fighters who have been sheltering in the tribal belt since 2001.
The military said it could be Pakistan’s most important battle since clashes with India in the mountains of Kashmir a decade ago.
“It will be the toughest of fighting,” one senior official said.
The operation, however, comes against a background of civil-military tension over a proposed US aid package that imposes strict conditions on the army. In an unusually strong statement yesterday, Pakistan’s military leadership expressed “serious concern” over the Kerry-Lugar bill, which triples non-military assistance to US$1.5 billion a year over five years.
The military spokesman, Athar Abbas, was not available for comment after the meeting of generals, but earlier he said troops attacking Waziristan expected to encounter “stiff resistance.” Abbas did not give a start date for the operation.
The army is expected to encircle Mehsud’s mountain lair in South Waziristan. On Monday a suicide bomber disguised as a soldier killed five people inside a UN office in Islamabad. Mehsud’s network claimed responsibility.
A day earlier, Mehsud’s successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, held a press conference for local journalists, dispelling US reports of his death and attempting to quell reports of disarray in the Taliban ranks.
An assault on Waziristan has been looming since the army’s successful operation in Swat this summer. The extent of the military’s ambition in Waziristan remains unclear. The army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, told Pakistani journalists that dislodging Uzbek fighters loyal to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, estimated at between 2,000 and 5,000 men, was at the heart of his strategy.
“He said that if we can take the Uzbeks out of Waziristan, then the dynamic of politics in South Waziristan will change,” said Imtiaz Gul, the author of The al-Qaida Connection: The Taliban and Terror in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas.
However, the new national sense of resolve against the Taliban has been diluted by the acrimonious national debate over the US aid package.
The Kerry-Lugar bill, which recently passed through the US Congress, triples non-military aid to US$1.5 billion per year over the next five years — the largest US assistance package to a civilian government in Pakistan.
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