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Sunday, March 14, 2010

Pakistan Army Digs In on Turf of the Taliban

From a forward base in the bare brown foothills of the soaring mountains of South Waziristan, Pakistani soldiers fired artillery at insurgents sheltering in scrub across the valley. Smoke blotted the sky as the soldiers set ablaze houses once used by the Taliban to hide caches of heavy weapons. In the Makeen bazaar, where the former leader of the Pakistani militants, Baitullah Mehsud, was once king, the army has flattened the jerry-built stores, including the ice cream parlor, scotching any idea of easy return. Here in the heartland of the Pakistani Taliban, the army has fought for five months to claw back territory from its indigenous enemy. A rare trip under military escort revealed that the battle had turned into a grinding test of wills with no neat resolution in sight. The Pakistani Army has, at least for the moment, gained the upper hand by taking the war to the Taliban in these barren mountains rather than retreating behind successive peace deals, as it once did. But it is not claiming victory. “The terrorists are nowhere and everywhere,” Lt. Col. Nisar Mughal said as he looked out on a landscape devoid of people, crops, animals or any sign of normal life. “This is a strange kind of warfare. We can’t say the area is completely sanitized. We are hunting them, killing them.” Mr. Mehsud and his men, allies of Al Qaeda, used this area over the past few years to attack Pakistani cities and military installations with a ferocious onslaught of suicide bombings and commando raids. Most have now fled to North Waziristan, or to other parts of the tribal areas and to Pakistan’s cities, leaving behind small bands of dedicated guerrillas. They continue to inflict casualties on the army with ambushes and sniper fire in a region where the British tried but failed to subdue the tribes during their colonial rule. The United States, a long-distance participant and a keen cheerleader in the current Pakistani campaign, killed Mr. Mehsud in a drone strike in August and appears to have killed his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, in another drone attack in January. But the suicide attacks continue, as evident in the bombings that killed more than 40 people in Lahore on Friday. Washington has sent extra artillery, helicopters, body armor, radio sets and evensurveillance drones to help Pakistan’s ground war. During a recent visit Secretary of StateHillary Rodham Clinton pledged $55 million to upgrade roads in the area. In return, the Obama administration would like the Pakistani military to pursue a full-scale offensive in North Waziristan against the Afghan Taliban, who use the area to launch operations against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and who serve as Pakistan’s proxies against Indian interests there. So far, the chief of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has made clear that India remains Pakistan’s prime enemy, despite the persistent insurgent threat, and that the army has its hands full with the South Waziristan campaign. It is a fight that his nuclear-armed military, which is trained for conventional warfare against Indian forces on the plains of Punjab, has been forced to adapt to in strange ways. At Nawazkot, a village just north of Makeen, Lt. Col. Yusuf Mehmood said one of his officers, trained in mountain climbing, scaled a 7,000-foot peak with ropes and crampons. The officer had 15 soldiers with him. “They managed to get above a group of about 300 militants, and then fired on them,” the colonel said. The militants scattered, he said. On a hill above Makeen, Colonel Mughal’s men hacked a trail with one bulldozer and six donkeys, used to carry weapons and ammunition. The trail was needed as the path for a new forward base overlooking Makeen, a series of small villages of flat-roofed mud compounds stretched out along a narrow valley. Each night, squads of soldiers, charged with fending off efforts by the militants to steal the lone bulldozer, guarded the precious machine. The trail took 45 days to build. “We are fighting within our means,” one major said wryly. Then the trail needed upkeep. Two army engineers, protected with their screen of 15 soldiers, scan the trail every morning for improvised explosive devices planted at night by the militants. Now that the snow has melted and pink flowers are blooming, lending a surprising softness to the harsh landscape of dry riverbeds and gravel tracks, the army says it will ask civilians who were ordered to leave last fall to return to their villages. The return of the people, many of them marooned in camps in North-West Frontier Province, will probably prove the hardest part of the operation. First, many militants are expected to drift back among the civilians. Second, the military will remain in South Waziristan for perhaps the next 18 months or so, the army says. But neither the army nor the national civilian government has done much preparation for fixing the broken system of indirect rule in the tribal areas that has failed over the last 60 years to deliver development. Much of the rebellion of the Pakistani Taliban was fueled by anger at the corruption of tribal leaders who pocketed government money intended for economic development, said a retired army officer, Murad Khan Mehsud, from the village of Nano, not far from Makeen. “I told General Kayani that half the teachers in my village are sitting in Dubai or Karachi, not in the schools,” Mr. Mehsud said. This was because under a time-honored practice in the tribal areas, teachers’ salaries were not paid to teachers, but to tribal leaders who in turn split the money between their relatives and a government bureaucrat, he said. Some residents have expressed hesitation about returning while the military remains. “We are being asked to go back, but we will only go back when the military leaves,” said Nasir Muhammad Mehsud, 18, an engineering student from the village of Khaisore, now living in Dera Ismail Khan, a city filled with the displaced from South Waziristan. If the military stays in South Waziristan, Mr. Mehsud said, Pakistani civilians will again be subject to attacks by the Taliban, who are not yet defeated. The soldiers, he said, will become targets of the militants, and the people will be caught in between. But most galling, Mr. Mehsud said, was the destruction of family property during the fighting, including 200 houses in his area. So far, there had been no offers of compensation for all that was lost, he said. Brig. Sarfraz Sattar, who leads the army operation in Makeen, acknowledged some of the difficulties of reform. But, he said, he remained upbeat. “The Mehsuds as a tribe did not support the Pakistani Taliban,” Brigadier Sattar said. “Baitullah Mehsud terrorized the people, slit the throats of the tribal leaders, and the people had to submit.” The army inflicted enough damage on the militants, he said, to make it hard for them to regain that kind of control.

World News Highlights TOP STORIES


BEIJING - The United States should not make a political issue out of the yuan, a Chinese central banker said on Friday, as the two countries lurched towards a potential bust-up over Beijing's currency regime.
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LAHORE, Pakistan - Suicide bombers targeting the Pakistani military killed at least 45 people in Lahore on Friday, officials said, in a challenge to government assertions that crackdowns have weakened Taliban insurgents.
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ATHENS - Greece's economy will shrink much more than the government is forecasting this year, the country's central bank governor said, as economists shrugged off slightly stronger data and warned of a further deterioration.
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BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had a narrow lead over rival Shi'ites, partial results in Iraq's tight election race showed on Friday, but a secularist challenger remained far ahead in minority Sunni areas.
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KABUL - An upcoming U.S.-led military campaign to regain control of the Taliban heartland of Kandahar will be a "decisive phase" in the Afghan war, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told frontline troops this week.
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JOHANNESBURG - Deep divisions between South Africa's ruling ANC and its labour and communist allies are threatening a decades-old alliance as rival factions battle for power and influence to shape policy.
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TOKYO - Japan's prime minister said the government and the Bank of Japan should work together to beat deflation as he fended off mounting political pressure for action on the economy and the yen, raising expectations that the central bank will ease monetary policy next week.
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MOSCOW - The Russian rouble is setting fresh 14-month peaks versus a euro-dollar basket on an almost daily basis, increasing speculation the central bank could put the brakes on the rally in order to protect economic growth.
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LONDON - An online opinion poll has shown Britain's opposition Conservatives well ahead of ruling Labour and on course for election victory, contrasting with other surveys showing the race too close to call.
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BANGKOK - Thai "red shirt" protestors began a series of demonstrations on Friday aimed at overthrowing the government, a scenario that has hit consumer confidence and may force the central bank to keep interest rates in Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy at a record low .

Zardari still biggest threat to democracy: Sharif

Notwithstanding the reconciliatory policies of President Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif has said he still considers the President as the biggest threat to democracy. Rubbishing reports regarding the PML-N playing the role of a 'friendly opposition', Sharif said Zardari is 'on his knees' and that his party would continue to play the pressure tactics that had worked wonders in restoration of judges belonging to the higher judiciary and the repealing of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). Speaking during a community meeting here, Sharif targeted Zardari saying the President has breached the Charter of Democracy (CoD). "Otherwise, my views about the president will not change. It's about time for Asif Zardari to think about everything. We want to move ahead only in light of the CoD," The News quoted Sharif, as saying. He said that the PML-N victories in the recent by-polls were a reflection of the national mood, and that the country does not need 'retrogressive politics'. "We don't need traditional and retrogressive politics in Pakistan. If someone thinks he is all in all, he should understand there is no space for this. We are popular because the nation trusts us," Sharif said. 

Deaths in Pakistan Swat blast


At least 14 people have been killed and 50 others wounded in a suicide attack in Pakistan's Swat valley. The blast on Saturday at a security checkpoint  in Saidu Sharif town comes just a day after a twin suicide attack on a military convoy in the city of Lahore killed at least 49 people. Speaking about Saturday's blast, Qazi Jamil, a senior police official, said the attacker was trying to get into a government building used by police and security forces. The Reuters news agency reported another official as saying the bomber had been travelling in a rickshaw when he detonated his explosives.

Large quantity of ammunitions being stocked by some groups in Karachi


A new report has revealed that large quantities of weapons and ammunitions are being stocked by some groups in Karachi. Police have prepared a confidential report, which has been dispatched to the concerned authorities. According to Police sources, Police security cell conducted a secret survey of different parts of Karachi and prepared a report. According to sources, at least three dozen people are involved in purchasing and stocking up of ammunitions and weapons. The weapons are being stored in open plots, residential houses and even a school is also being used, these locations are in the precincts of Aziz Bhati, Sachal and Madina Town Police Stations. 

Deadly blasts rock Afghan city



At least 35 people have been killed after a series of explosions rocked the centre of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, an interior ministry spokesman has said. Saturday's attacks also left 45 people, including policemen and civilians, injured. The Afghan capital, said: "We spoke to the spokesman of the governor to the city of Kandahar [and] it appears to be a co-ordinated attack. "One explosion happened near the police headquarters. The second one was heard near the provincial guest house in an area where also President [Hamid] Karzai's half brother [Ahmad Wali Karzai] lives. "Now he [Wali Karzai] is in Kabul; we did speak to him and he did not have much more information than that. "The third explosion was apparently heard  ... next to Kandahar prison."