News
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Pakistan mulls Swat-type operation in Waziristan* US military officials say Kayani recently told Gen Allen that September operation will be a large-scale offensive designed to sweep Waziristan
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: Top Pakistani military officials plan to conduct a major terrorist-clearing operation next month similar to the 2009 Swat valley operation that purged one of the most Taliban-infested regions of Pakistan, US military officials told Fox News.
The news confirmed a Monday disclosure from US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, who had said Pakistan had indicated its military was planning an operation against terrorists in a terrorist hotbed in the northwest.
Now, US military officials in Kabul and Washington say that Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani recently told the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen John Allen, that it would be a large-scale offensive designed to sweep the Waziristan tribal agencies.
The officials, who have close knowledge of the meeting between Allen and Kayani, requested anonymity due to the fragile status of relations between the US and Pakistan. They described the operation as similar to the clearing of Swat, in which Pakistan sent in thousands of troops for an 18-month-rout of a mountain region where the military is still positioned today to prevent Taliban from returning.
Such a tactical effort would have the potential to be a significant turning point in the tense relationship Washington has endured with what it describes as its most important ally in the war on terror, even though that ally has often been uncooperative in the face of US demands that it tackle its growing militancy problem.
“We do not know at this stage if this indication of an operation has any substance to it,” said a US military official in Kabul. “It may be lip service or it is perhaps an attempt to placate us as we continue to urge Pakistan to rout out militants and their safe havens within the Tribal Areas. The militants who hide there not only inflict casualties on Afghan citizens as well as Afghan and coalition forces but they also are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Pakistanis.”
It is also unclear if the operation would reach into the unruly region of North Waziristan, where some of the US’s highest-value terrorist targets are based, or simply in South Waziristan, where the Pakistan military has been trying to rid the tribal agency of terrorists since mid-2009.
Pakistan’s operation would target Taliban fighters from both the Afghan and Pakistan factions, which separately aim to oust the Western-friendly governments of their respective countries, said a military official in Washington.
It is unclear if the operation will hunt down elements of the Haqqani network, which is said by the US to support the remnants of original core of al Qaeda who were behind the 9/11 attacks.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk