Waziristan Operation: Is It Too Late?
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
While talking to the BBC last week about the North Waziristan Operation, General Asim Bajwa, the Director General of ISPR, disclosed that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has lost the capability to launch coordinated assaults. “Because terrorists have been scattered, they are only able to carry out random attacks,” he boasted.“The second-level leadership of the banned TTP had been either killed or arrested during the operation.”
This statement which comes straight from the horse’s mouth must not be ignored. It reinforces the commitment of our armed forces to assert the writ of the state even in those areas of the tribal belt where it was never established.
Not too long ago, there was a time when fear possessed the hearts of Pakistanis. The terrorists had struck all the major cities one after another, killing tens of people and wounding hundreds in every attack. From Peshawar to Karachi, the streets were packed with the fallen bodies of Pakistani men, women and children, their lives inexpensive and their blood dispensable. Yet, the people in power did not show any resolve to bring the culprits to book, a strategy that allowed them to literally convert Pakistan into a slaughter house.
What made our reputation worse was the general impression both in the local and international press that the deep state and the terrorist groups were hand in glove with each other - if not completely then at least on certain issues - even when the military installations and the offices of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) were being targeted. As embarrassing as it was, Pakistanis having no clue of such a nexus, on the other hand, wished to fight the war against terrorism, united as one nation just like the Americans did after 9/11, but there was no one to fight for them or, if nothing else, at least to try to keep them united.
Specially right wing political parties did everything they could to disunite the people. I am not sure why - although there are theories about them getting the instructions from Rawalpindi too - but they always chose one of the three options to misguide them: deliberately hide the ground realities from the people, adulterate the facts with their personal opinions or simply deny them while looking the other way because what lay in front of them was too onerous to confront or too odious to be shared with ordinary Pakistanis. Often times, they relied on lies about the local origin of most terrorists, their agenda to take over the state apparatus and their association with the international terror organizations like Al-Qaeda. In essence, they played an extremely divisive role. Further confusing their right leaning constituency, who although wanted to fight but was much more willing to identify USA as the enemy instead of local militia, these politicians used terrorism as a political slogan to further spur anti-American sentiment, to score political points against their liberal yet more realistic rivals and to gain short-term popular support.
Today, few months have gone by since the operation has begun in the North Waziristan(NWA). The military’s grip is firm on the undertaking, its morale high with the support of the nation and its death toll low because of superior technology and excellent planning, They have killed more than one thousand terrorists and they are satisfied with the speed and the extent of their victory. Notwithstanding that the top tier leadership has managed to slip out of Miran Shah into Afghanistan probably, we must admit that it would be hard for the terrorists now to recruit, train and motivate enough foot soldiers to launch new attacks in the battle ground Pakistan.
If we all agree on that point, and believe - as we should - that the backbone of the organizational structure of TTP has been shattered by the military onslaught, then the real question we have to ask ourselves is not only that how long it will take for the internally displaced persons (IDPs) to go back to their homes, or what is the cost of keeping them in those camps, or what is our strategy to rehabilitate them in their home districts, but to ask why did we sacrifice fifty thousand people, all those men, women and children who will never be able to reach their homes back to loved ones and why did we wait for that long. I am seriously not ready to think that the people in power waited for almost a decade because they wanted to build a consensus or they believed in giving peace a chance or they held back to see the outcome of the dialogue process. They never wait, we all know that, nor do they care much about building a consensus or think high of negotiations led by the civilian authorities. And if they really wished for the nation to support them, they can modulate a consensus in a matter of few hours - what to talk about days or weeks. Remember, it took them fifteen days and one short video of a woman being flogged by Taliban in public to bring the whole country on one page for the Swat operation.
The question becomes even more significant when the operation in North Waziristan has not turned out to be a huge challenge for the military. Neither the death toll is very high, as we discussed, nor the economy has suffered because of the intervention; on the contrary, if there had been less political turmoil in Islamabad, the economy according to some estimates would have been growing at faster pace than it had been in the last two or three years.
We also need to ask ourselves why the nation is still kept in the dark about this delay. Why did, except for the few - the ones who may not be answerable to the public - no one knows about the obstacles? And if they have erred in their assessment, a mistake that has caused thousands of lives during the process, how could the nation make them accountable?
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