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May 20, 2008
Pakistan Just Might Finally Be Getting Serious About Cleansing Tribal Areas Of Extremists
If we can go by what some recent reporting shows, Pakistan is serious about cleansing the tribal areas of terrorists and militants:
Amid US concerns about talks between the new government and the rebels, the Pakistani military flew in reporters to show how it has sealed off the main access points to a nearby region where Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud is based.Much more at The Strat-Sphere ...On one of the peaks which loom over Spinkai, Brigadier Ali Abbas tells how the 2,000 men of his brigade surrounded some 600 Taliban rebels guarding access to Mehsud's den in January.
To the north and west, the other access points to Mehsud territory in the heart of the South Waziristan tribal area were retaken after several months by the army, which says it first emptied the region of civilians.
"We have made a vacuum around Mehsud territory, they are encircled, blocked," army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told journalists. "With our operation, we forced them to sit at the negotiating table."
In January, the army launched an offensive in the region under pressure from Washington, which regards the tribal belt as a haven for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, backed by its Taliban allies.
This info gives credence to what we posted on back in April when we wrote that changes were apparently occurring along the Afghan border of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Fighting had then broken out between Islamo-Fascist militants and local tribes along a key transportation line between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it appeared then that the local tribes may be getting some support from Pakistani security forces.
At the time of the writing, a Paki friend of mine in Pakistan with close connections to Senator Asfandyar Wali's "Awami National Party" (which defeated the religious parties in the recent election) described the situation as a people getting fed-up with foreign influences from Saudi Arabia and Iran, and wanting education and a better economy (i.e. real jobs), not militancy. Of note was the fact that the religious parties that for the past five years had governed North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan Province (they receive much of their funding from foreign sources), which border Afghanistan and the tribal areas, were begining to loose their influence.
Cross posted from Hyscience
Posted by Richard at May 20, 2008 8:46 AM
