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Editorial: What we’re up against in Waziristan

The Taliban of Baitullah Mehsud suffered 25 dead after their attacks on army checkposts in South Waziristan and the Jandola frontier region were repulsed on Sunday. The attacks happened in the wake of the demand made by Baitullah that the army should leave “his area”. A similar demand had emanated from North Waziristan from his branch outfit there and other warlords with whom he is acting in cooperation. Sensing the coming storm, the local population is fleeing South Waziristan to swell the tide of refugees caused by Taliban atrocities in the semi-tribal areas under the NWFP government. The Army Public College Hangu was attacked on Sunday and its administrator cruelly done to death.

Baitullah Mehsud has suffered a defeat in Swat and his telephone call saying the Taliban should leave the area was intercepted by the army. The government has already announced that the army will go for Baitullah in his fastness of South Waziristan and this time everyone knows it means business, untied to any parliamentary resolution to evacuate the affected areas and allow “talks” with the killers. It is clear that skirmishes with the men of Baitullah Mehsud have already started and that the Taliban are forewarned about what they might face in the days to come. The truth is that they also knew what was coming in Swat but were shocked by the impact of the military attack.

As Swat is pacified in the days to come and the refugees start returning to their homes amid reinforced local administration, it will be time to think about the phenomenon of Baitullah Mehsud, the biggest warlord on both sides of the Durand Line, who has the backing of Al Qaeda and its international brigade of terrorists. It will be in order here to outline the organisational strength and firepower of this warlord with the help of the just-published book written by a Pashtun scholar Aqeel Yusufzai, titled Talibanisation (Urdu).

Baitullah Mehsud, born in Bannu, is from the Badwi Khel tribe, and his Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), while headquartered in Makin in South Waziristan, has branchline groups complete with their own commanders in North Waziristan, Kurram, Orakzai, Mohmand, Bajaur and Khyber. Thanks to the jihadi groups once supported by the Pakistani state and because of their affiliations with Al Qaeda, TTP has its supporting manpower in all the four provinces, particularly in South Punjab where first contacts were made between Sipah Sahaba and its Arab patrons. The Pakistani press has already taken note of. Commanders Qari Hussain, Rais Khan, Salim Sakin, Azmatullah are his front-leaders in South Waziristan while Qari Hussain specialises in training suicide-bombers.

After tasting the toughness of his subordinate Taliban group in the Malakand division, one can estimate the kind of power he will use when challenged. In North Waziristan, considered a territory of the Jalaluddin Haqqani group, he has Nur Syed Amir, Faqir Dawar and Haji Aftab Khan; the last-named also charged with looking after Baitullah’s foreign guests from the Arab world, Central Asia, Chechnya in Russia and Xinjiang in China. Commanders who lead bands of Taliban marauders in other agencies are: Hakimullah (Orakzai and Kurram with 8,000 men), Rehmanullah and Hazrat Ali (Khyber, 1,200), Umar Khalid (Mohmand, 5,000), and Faqir Muhammad (Bajaur, 5,000). Baitullah himself is estimated to dispose of 30,000 warriors, supplemented with Tahir Yuldashev’s 4,000 Uzbeks and other “foreigners”. The TTP could have nearly 50,000 men at its disposal. If you also count the non-Baitullah Taliban, the total estimate comes to over 100,000.

According to some estimates, Baitullah could have in his kitty around Rs 4 billion to spend annually. This money comes from drugs facilitated by Al Qaeda contacts, Arab money from the Gulf, money made from kidnapping for ransom, looting of banks, smuggling and “protection money” in general. He has weapons produced in Russia, the US and India, and has been looting explosives produced at the Wah munitions factory. His strength has been built up during a period of benign neglect in Islamabad, which has been focusing on India as the country’s premier threat. But Swat has proved that the Taliban can be taken on and defeated. The national consensus is there and crucial international support in these lean times is forthcoming too. *

Second Editorial: Track-2 dialogue with India

The good news, if it is correct, is that the Indo-Pak Track-2 Dialogue is going to restart next week. This is an “unofficial” channel of communication between the two countries which has partly encouraged the governments in New Delhi and Islamabad to shed their extreme views of each other and take on board some of the innovative ideas floated during the Dialogue by scholars, retired diplomats and military officers from both sides.

Relations are bad between the two nuclear powers in South Asia in the post-Mumbai period, but the world expects them finally to sit down and talk to each other. Both have problems talking at the official level because of the absolute positions taken by them; yet there is much that they must address together if they want to live in peace. Track-2 was started in 1990 when Kashmir was hotting up and there were fears of war ensuing under pressure from their own one-sided propaganda against each other. Apparently, no great progress was made in terms of breakthroughs, but it can safely be said that the state discourse was effectively interrupted by other voices that came from the private sector.

The diversification of discourse through Track-2 emboldened the politicians to talk freely about peace. During the 1990s, hundreds of hawks and doves from India and Pakistan engaged with each other and found that apparently antagonistic views contained a measure of middle ground where agreements could be arrived at. The result was that both PPP and PML governments in Pakistan tried to explore the possibilities of détente with India. Some of the stock-in-trade of these efforts was borrowings from Track-2. New Delhi and Islamabad finally engaged in “back channel” talks when the PML was in power.

One good signal came when our Indus Waters Commissioner Mr Jamaat Ali Shah left for India last week for talks with his counterpart. Reported in Nawa-e-Waqt (May 31, 2009), Indus Waters Treaty Commissioner Jamaat Ali Shah, while leaving for New Delhi to talk about waters shared by India and Pakistan, said that Pakistan was getting its share of waters under the Indus Treaty and that building a dam was the right of India. He said less water in Pakistani rivers was because of lack of rain, not because India had blocked it. *

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