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Hundreds dead in fighting along Afghanistan-Pakistan border
By James Cogan
16 August 2008
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Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA)
and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) have been plunged into
the heaviest fighting between government troops and Islamist and
Pashtun tribal militants in more than two years. Fierce battles
have taken place this week in Bajaur, the northern-most tribal
agency, which borders Afghanistan’s Konar province. Dozens
of fighters on both sides have been killed and tens of thousands
of civilians have been forced to flee their homes.
The chief secretary of the FATA, Habibullah Khan, told Agence
France-Presse: “We have around 135,000 people who have left
their homes there [Bajaur]. We have directed officials in adjoining
districts to provide shelter, food and health care to the migrating
families. We are setting up more camps to help these people, just
like refugees.”
The Pakistani military offensive in Bajaur and the tremendous
human suffering it is causing are the direct outcome of US pressure
on the new civilian government of Prime Minister Yousuf Rusa Gilani,
which took power after elections in February. With increasing
heat, the Bush administration and US military commanders have
demanded that Gilani order a full-scale crackdown to prevent Afghan
guerilla fighters using the FATA as a base for their war against
the US and NATO forces occupying Afghanistan.
The Bajaur agency is under the effective control of militants
loyal to Maulvi Omar and Faqir Mohammad, the local representatives
of the Pakistani Tehrik-e-Taliban movement. It is believed to
be one of the main bases for Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s
Hezb-e Islami movement, which is fighting the US-led occupation
in an alliance with supporters of the former Taliban regime. It
is alleged that Al Qaeda members are also hiding out in its rugged
terrain.
Several hundred militants from Bajaur are believed to have
crossed into Afghanistan on July 13 to attack a newly established
American post in the Wanat district of Konar. Nine US soldiers
were killed and 15 wounded in one of the costliest days for American
forces since the October 2001 invasion.
On August 6, some 200 to 300 troops of the Pakistani paramilitary
Frontier Corps made what appears to have been a poorly planned
attempt to reoccupy abandoned posts near the town of Loyesam and
cut off insurgent routes over the border. They came under almost
immediate attack by heavily armed tribal fighters.
After three days of fighting, the government troops pulled
back, leaving behind over 70 dead or captured and several tanks
and armoured vehicles. Since last weekend, Taliban fighters have
established defensive positions in the villages surrounding the
agency capital, Khar. They have reportedly blocked the main highway
line linking Bajaur with the adjoining agency of Mohmand and seized
the main road to the capital of NWFP, Peshawar.
Reports indicate that the Pakistani military has been pounding
the Taliban positions with jet fighters and helicopter gunships
throughout the week. Dozens of houses, several mosques and at
least one school have been reduced to rubble. On Tuesday, Pakistani
officials claimed they had killed a senior Al Qaeda leader, Abu
Saeed al-Masri, also known as Mustafa Abu al-Yazid. Yazid was
alleged to have played a major role in plotting the September
11 attacks and terrorist operations since.
The claim has not been confirmed and may be an attempt to refute
recent US accusations that sections of the Pakistani intelligence
services are still assisting Islamic extremists, as they officially
did until 2001. Government spokesmen have also downplayed their
own losses while claiming that “hundreds” of Taliban
militants have been killed. The exact number of casualties from
the week’s fighting is shrouded by the contradictory reports.
Bajaur is now the third battleground in the Pashtun regions
of Pakistan. Fighting was already taking place in the Swat Valley
district of NWFP and in areas of the Khyber tribal agency, to
the west of Peshawar. The next areas that are likely to be targeted
are the agencies of South and North Waziristan—the strongholds
of the overall leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud.
The area is also the base for the Afghan Taliban warlord Jalaluddin
Haqqani. Numerous passes exist in the mountainous region through
which his fighters can move into southern Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar told the Associated
Press that the government operations in the Swat Valley and the
tribal agencies meant “it is an open war between us and them.”
The same day, a Taliban bomb destroyed a military van as it left
Peshawar. The massive blast hit other vehicles in the vicinity,
killing a five-year-old girl. Nine Pakistani Air Force personnel
and civilian employees in the van were killed.
On Thursday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosion outside
a police station in the city of Lahore, the capital of Punjab
province and far from the front line of the conflict. Seven people
were killed. The attack may signal the beginning of a concerted
campaign of Islamist bombings targeting Pakistan’s major
population centres. Last week, nine prospective suicide bombers
from South Waziristan were arrested in Lahore in possession of
explosive-laden vests and small arms.
An extension of the Afghan war
The growing violence in Pakistan is an extension of the US
military attempt to turn Afghanistan into an American client state
in Central Asia. If the insurgent safe havens in Pakistan cannot
be closed down, the US and NATO forces occupying Afghanistan face
what a British commander referred to as a “generational war”—a
conflict lasting for another 20 years and consuming vast resources.
Occupation troops and the Afghan government army and police
control the main cities and towns and can secure strategic roads,
bridges and landing strips. Insurgents, however, move with relative
impunity in the countryside. Large sections of the Pashtun population
in southern and eastern Afghanistan openly support the resistance
to the US and NATO invaders and provide assistance and information.
When necessary, the insurgents can retreat over the border to
bases in Pakistan to re-supply, treat their wounded and train
new forces.
A classic guerilla war is taking place. Insurgent operations
along the major highways linking Kabul with cities in the south
and east are creating havoc for the occupation forces. Over recent
months, bridges have been destroyed and dozens of supply convoys
ambushed. An anonymous manager of a western company contracted
to truck supplies to NATO forces told the British Financial
Times this week: “In the summer months, I would expect
to be attacked once or twice a week.”
A Kabul-based fuel trader, Matthew Leeming, reported: “The
Taliban’s new tactics of blowing up bridges between Kabul
and Kandahar, forcing convoys to slow down and become softer targets,
is causing severe problems to companies trying to supply Kandahar
from Kabul.” In a major attack in June, a convoy of 50 trucks
was virtually destroyed.
Over the past week, at least 20 US and NATO troops have been
killed or wounded by roadside bombings, ambushes or suicide bombings
in various parts of Afghanistan, though mainly in the provinces
that border Pakistan. Three American soldiers were killed on Thursday
by an explosion and two more on Friday in a Taliban ambush. For
the third month in a row, more US troops have been killed in Afghanistan
than in Iraq.
Overall, 573 American soldiers have died in the Afghan theatre
since October 2001, with close to 2,500 wounded. Britain has lost
115 dead and Canada 90. In a rare attack in the northern areas
of the country, where other NATO countries provide most of the
occupation troops, the first Latvian soldier to die in the war
was killed by a roadside bomb on Monday in the province of Faryab.
The desperation of the occupation forces is reflected in the
virtually daily killing of Afghan civilians by indiscriminate
air strikes or trigger-happy troops at checkpoints. On Tuesday,
British soldiers in Helmand province shot dead a man who did not
slow down as he approached a road block. The following day, British
forces severely wounded three people in a car that tried to overtake
a line of traffic.
The occupation forces are now carrying out more than 20 air
strikes on alleged but unconfirmed Taliban targets every day in
Afghanistan. Afghan officials reported that an attack last Saturday
in the province of Kapisa killed 12 civilians and wounded 18 others.
The NATO-commanded International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) admitted in a press release that at least eight Afghan
civilians were killed by helicopter gunships that were called
in after an ambush on Australian troops on Monday. ISAF claimed
that 25 other people killed by the gunships were all Taliban fighters.
More than 1,000 Afghan civilians have been killed this year
as a result of insurgent attacks or by the occupation forces,
as well as 1,500 to 2,000 alleged guerillas. As the carnage escalates
and the hatred of the Afghan people toward the US-led occupation
mounts, so do the calls in the United States for more troops to
be sent and for the US military to conduct its own hot pursuits
and air strikes over the border into Pakistan. The campaign is
being spearheaded by Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack
Obama, who has made the escalation of the Afghan war the centre-piece
of his foreign policy.
The Pakistani government, fearful of popular opposition to
any such incursions, formally denies the US permission to carry
out attacks on its territory. The ongoing air strikes on militant
camps, however, make clear that covert operations are taking place.
On Tuesday evening, an unmanned American Predator surveillance
aircraft fired missiles into an alleged Taliban safe-house in
South Waziristan, killing at least nine people.
If the Pakistani military proves incapable or unwilling to
subjugate the tribal agencies, the next stage of a war that has
already dragged on for close to seven years may well be American
ground troops crossing the border to attack guerilla safe havens.
See Also:
Pakistani government moves to impeach
President Musharraf
[14 August 2008]
In response to US demands: Pakistani
military attacks Islamist forces
[9 August 2008]
US demands crackdown by Pakistani government
along Afghanistan border
[1 August 2008]
Pakistan faces mounting US
demands to suppress "terrorism"
[25 July 2008]
The Obama candidacy and the
new consensus on Afghanistan
[21 July 2008]
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