SPY EYES

The United States is steadily mounting pressure on Pakistan to extend its counterinsurgency operations to the North Waziristan Agency and go after the Haqqani network of the Afghan Taliban. A kind of consensus has been built in the Western media that North Waziristan is a global nerve-centre of terrorism.

The Obama administration considers an operation essential for the dismantlement of the Haqqani network to claim victory in Afghanistan. But Pakistani authorities are reluctant to go after militant groups such as the Haqqani network, fearing a fierce blowback inside the country. Another inhibiting factor is that the army is overstretched in other tribal regions.

North Waziristan is mainly a land of rugged mountains excluding the bordering region that separates it from South Waziristan. The opening up of an active new front in North Waziristan would be stirring up a hornet’s nest by antagonising Mullah Nazir in the Wana sub-division of South Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur’s Taliban faction based to the west of Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan, and a host of other militant groups.

So far, Mullah Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur have been opposed to fighting the Pakistani military because they want to focus their attention on Afghanistan. The military has cut peace deals with both Mullah Nazir and Gul Bahadur in the past. In 2009 the latter’s group even allowed the army free passage through North Waziristan when it staged operations in South Waziristan. On the other hand, the Pakistani military supported Mullah Nazir’s efforts to eject from his tribal areas elements of the Uzbek terror group Islamic Jihad Union.

The US wants the Pakistani army to launch an operation against the Haqqani network and the Taliban group led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, since the Americans view these groups as a block to their victory in Afghanistan. But this seems totally impossible due to ground realities which cannot be ignored. Gul Bahadur, the Haqqanis, and Nazir are together estimated to have more than 50,000 forces. In addition, more than 10,000 battle-hardened militants, including Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens, Indonesians, Tajiks and others affiliated with Al-Qaeda, are present in the area. The nightmare scenario would be the Haqqanis, Gul Bahadur, Al-Qaeda and other hardcore militant groups turning on the Pakistani army in retaliation for a North Waziristan operation. At the same time the country will have to face a deadly new wave of suicide attacks.

In the past even limited, and inconclusive, army operations resulted in small, scattered militant organisations – even those who were otherwise each other’s rivals – getting united against the Pakistani army. In a similar situation a few years ago, even Mullah Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur joined hands with their rival Baitullah Mehsud and other anti-Pakistani militant groups under the umbrella of an “Ittihad-e-Shura-e-Mujahideen.”

The last time the Pakistani military took on the Taliban in North Waziristan was in October 2007. The two sides fought pitched battles after the military launched artillery barrages and aircraft assaults against Taliban-controlled villages in North Waziristan. The Taliban responded by setting up complex ambushes, including surface-to-air missile hits. Several Pakistani army helicopters were said to have been shot down during the fighting. The fighting waned when at the end of that month the government pushed for a peace deal. But the Taliban, led by the Haqqani Network and Hafiz Gul Bahadar, remained entrenched in the region.

The advance on North Waziristan is fraught with multiple risks and Pakistan must resist the US pressure, simply because it is not in our national interest to launch a military venture there. A large-scale operation in North Waziristan would also jeopardise the military’s efforts to clean up other areas. In fighting America’s war, our military and rulers cannot ignore our own strategic interests.