Pakistan: The South Waziristan Offensive Continues

A Pakistani army soldier guards his South Waziristan post Nov. 18 as he watches internally displaced civilians fleeing from military operations against Taliban militants

Summary

Inspector-General of the Pakistani Frontier Corps Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan said Nov. 24 that South Waziristan would be split into two separate agencies. The statement comes nearly six weeks into a Pakistani military offensive to root out Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) forces from their stronghold in South Waziristan, and will form part of Pakistan's political strategy to maintain alliances with neutral tribal leaders and prevent the Taliban from re-entrenching themselves in the region.

Analysis

The military offensive Rah-i-Nijat is entering its sixth week of ground operations in South Waziristan. The Pakistani army has been fighting through a section of South Waziristan home to the Mehsud tribe that was, until recently, the center of operations for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The military has employed a strategy of attacking this area from three directions: Jandola-Sararogha, Shakai-Kaniguram and Razmak-Makeen. Each axis has led to the capture of major roads and major population centers in the area - objectives that deny militants mobility and sanctuary.




The military has not completely consolidated its control over the area - militant ambushes, mortar and improvised explosive devices (IED) attacks continue. However, the military has captured and cleared the major population centers of Sararogha, Kaniguram and Makeen, and is now moving to other strategic population centers such as Ladha (where there is a fort that was taken by the TTP in 2008) and Janata, as well as clearing smaller villages outside of the larger towns.









It is important to emphasize that military operations are ongoing and that the Pakistani forces deployed to South Waziristan will be tied up there for some time. Presently, there is no withdrawal plan and the military has not indicated when operation Rah-i-Nijat will conclude. This also means that internally displace persons (IDPs) in South Waziristan will continue to be without homes for a while. However, the total IDPs resulting from Rah-i-Nijat number around 300,000 - much more manageable for the government than the nearly 2 million IDPs that resulted from Rah-i-Rast, the May 2009 military operation in the Swat Valley.




Pakistan, however, still faces many challenges, including how it can mitigate the dispersion of soldiers and prevent the TTP from simply re-establishing itself outside of South Waziristan. Even before military operations began, many of the high-level TTP commanders were believed to have fled to other areas of Pakistan, so it is key that the militant threat does not return and re-establish itself as soon as the military operations end. By the nature of non-state groups like the Taliban, leaders are elusive, so capturing or killing all of them is extremely difficult, but disrupting their bases of operations will likely weaken their power and frustrate their objectives against the Pakistani state.




In addition to the South Waziristan, the army has also paid considerable attention to the northern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) agencies of Bajaur, Orakzai, and Khyber, where pre-existing Taliban allies remain strong and have likely attracted at least some fleeing militants from South Waziristan. Militants in Bajaur Agency continue to engage the Pakistani army, and as recently as Nov. 22, the army killed 16 militants in an operation there that was part of the larger mission of preventing the spread of militant fighters. Despite recent success against militants in Bajaur, Islamabad still faces belligerents there.




Meanwhile, in Orakzai Agency (which was the home of current TTP leader Hakeemullah Mehsud before he took over following Baitullah Mehsud's death), the Pakistani air force has conducted a sustained air campaign against several militant positions and killed scores of militants. However, it is clear that the TTP and its militant allies have maintained their capability to attack the Pakistani state, as seen by the string of attacks since Rah-i-Nijat began.




Additionally, Pakistani ground forces and helicopter gunships have been patrolling Khyber Agency to protect the major route that is used to supply NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan as well as deny militants a sanctuary from which they can strike at nearby Peshawar. Lashkar-i-Islam (LI) in collaboration with the TTP is likely responsible for recent attacks in Peshawar. Even though LI is more oriented toward organized crime and making money by smuggling goods into Afghanistan, it has an interest in allying with the TTP (which it has been in competition with) in order to resist the state's offensive.









The Nov. 24 announcement that South Waziristan will be divided and politically administered as two separate agencies (raising the number of agencies in FATA from seven to eight) is also part of Islamabad's strategy to maintain order in South Waziristan once the military mission there is complete. The specific geographical split is not yet clear, but it will largely divide the Mehsud and Waziri tribal areas. The Mehsud area is in the center of South Waziristan, where the TTP has its largest presence and, consequently, where the Pakistani military has launched operation Rah-i-Nijat. The Waziri tribal area (largely under the control of Taliban warlord Maulvi Nazir Ahmad) is located primarily in the west along the border with Afghanistan.




Maulvi Nazir and the Waziri tribes located along the Afghan border have cooperated with Islamabad by remaining neutral before and during the execution of Rah-i-Nijat. Nazir's forces are more concerned with fighting Western forces in Afghanistan and have not taken up arms against Islamabad. The understanding reached between Islamabad and Nazir was an effort to divide forces in South Waziristan in order to isolate the TTP and its leadership from neighboring tribes, whose combined resistance to the Pakistani military would have frustrated their mission. Splitting South Waziristan agency in two would be a continuation of the strategy to divide control of the geographically difficult-to-govern territory in order to weaken remaining TTP elements. This also would have put the TTP's area of operation under Islamabad's direct control without unnecessarily impeding upon other actors in the region (like the Waziris) whom Islamabad is wary of further alienating.




Islamabad is considering several options to govern South Waziristan and FATA in general after Rah-i-Nijat. First, FATA may lose its autonomous status and become another province, which would give Islamabad more control over the area's governance and services. Another option would be to follow the recent example of Gilgit-Baltistan in the north, which is not a new province but will now be responsible for its own regional executive, legislature and judiciary. FATA could also be incorporated into the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and its governing structures assimilated into the NWFP's government (which is much more closely controlled than FATA). Regardless of what happens, it will be quite some time before military control on the ground can permit effective political changes that would drastically alter the way the area is governed.




The federal government is responsible for these decisions, which is itself suffering from destabilizing disputes like the one surrounding the National Reconciliation Ordinance - a highly controversial piece of legislation that granted amnesty to politicians accused of corruption and other criminal activity, many of whom are part of the current government.




But for now, the Pakistani military is still occupied with the task of securing the area and preventing the TTP from taking back what it has lost. The future success of this offensive depends upon the outcome of the political battle in Islamabad over the NRO, which will be heating up once the legislation expires on Nov. 28.