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EDITORIAL: Attacking South Waziristan

A gathering representing all the political parties in government and opposition has given Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Kayani the formal go-ahead to attack terrorist bases in South Waziristan. The decision to attack was taken by the politicians after a briefing by General Kayani in which he explained that the terrorists attacking in various parts of the country were sourced in South Waziristan and that their desperation was clearly owed to their weakened position.

General Kayani was of the opinion that this was the right moment to strike in the stronghold of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but the army needed complete support from the civilian government and the opposition to give its soldiers the kind of moral backing they needed to operate in their own territory. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani presided over the meeting that gave the general the clearance to launch the attack.

This is strategically the right time to go into South Waziristan where the state has in the past tried to parley the local warlords into peace. It first talked to a Wazir leader called Nek Muhammad but the peace accord did not last long, and Nek Muhammad was killed in 2004; it then negotiated peace with Baitullah Mehsud in 2005 but once again the agreement broke down, and Baitullah Mehsud was killed in 2009. Wary of talking peace from a position of weakness, the state waited till its position was strengthened on the ground by Operation Rah-e-Rast in Malakand.

South Waziristan is supposed to be the toughest terrain on which to fight any enemy. Its area is the largest among the FATA agencies, but its population is barely half a million compared to Malakand where it is 3 million. The population of South Waziristan has either fled the area in anticipation of the attack – which they have repeatedly but silently recommended to the army – or are in the process of doing so by moving towards Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP.

For once the army is not responding in a knee-jerk manner to desperate initiatives taken by the terrorists; it is deciding what it will do and where and the TTP will have to respond to the choices the army will make on the battlefield. Also, the Pakistan Army will not be facing the enemy from a position of weakness, including a total lack of experience in fighting an irregular war. It will act based on the insights gained from operations in Malakand and Bajaur and will not be stricken by doubts about where it stood vis-à-vis the people of Pakistan.

The politicians may be divided over other matters but are united over the need for a military operation against the terrorists. There was a time when the opposition in parliament was actually not convinced by a military briefing and still recommended “talking” to the Taliban instead of taking them on in Malakand. The Pakistan Army sees no disadvantage in international disapproval of what it does but rightly concerns itself about the consent of the people of Pakistan as represented in parliament. The consensus expressed on Friday therefore will be the most certain guarantee for an operation “with full national conviction”.

Across the border, in Afghanistan, the Unites States and its NATO allies are wondering if they should continue their war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. President Barack Obama is wavering over whether to send in ten to sixty thousand additional troops to Afghanistan or think of formulating a strategy of exit by 2011. The South Waziristan operation will help the US decide not to leave Pakistan in the lurch again. It is the operation in Malakand – and its remarkable success in a short time – that has encouraged the West to think that it is possible to defeat terrorism.

The Kerry-Lugar legislation has emanated from a feeling of confidence in the ability of Pakistan to defeat the terrorists – despite the ill-advised language it used in the “conditionalities” set down in it, which actually communicated a lack of it. The operation in South Waziristan will decide a lot of things on the other side of the Durand Line. The US and its allies will have to take a close look at the new situation arising from the operation, they will have to respond to the possible relocation of the “foreign” terrorists back into Afghanistan and address Pakistan’s concerns about its security. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Kerry-Lugar now a non-issue

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Friday made his “explanatory” speeches on the Kerry-Lugar Bill in the two houses of parliament. From the response he got one can say that the wind has gone out of the greatly media-exaggerated sense of national outrage over the US legislation. In the National Assembly there was only a feeble shout or two of “shame-shame” while the Senate echoed with empty spaces left behind by absentees.

The media will suffer some exhaustion from its hype but we can be sure that the desperate TV anchors will recover soon enough, thanks to the ephemerality of the medium and the quick incidence of grave crises in Pakistan. Economics became less of a science during this period of argument in which everyone participated, including the partisan economist who thought he could graft national honour to his discipline. Some “specialists” also decided to put on the offended pride “to be on the safe side”.

The barometer of offence is supposed to come down steeply as the Pakistani military receives its F-16s and the Pentagon gives the green signal for an additional $200 million aid in the form of equipment. The “rage of age” experienced by retired bureaucrats and generals – one venerable gentleman actually exhorted the nation to start manning the barricades – will subside as more interesting titbits like the NRO flash into sight. Social scientists who spoke vaguely of mobilising domestic resources in the face of a sharply declining writ of the state will have to refocus on load-shedding.

It is unfortunate that what should have been an academic for-and-against debate declined into journalists warning each other of having to “face the wrath of the future generations”. Offended orators spoke as if Pakistan had never digested “conditions” laid down in US laws before, enabling Washington to part with funds. Meanwhile, Mr Shah Mahmood Qureshi was clutching a statement of reassurance to Pakistan from the movers and shakers of the US Congress that Pakistan had never received before. *

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