Image Credit: NY Times, Soldiers on patrol in Swat
On Tuesday, news agencies cited a militant spokesman from Hafiz Gul Bahadur’s group in North Waziristan, who said they were “scrapping” their peace deal with the government because of U.S. drone strikes in the region. The Taliban faction had initially agreed to stay on the sidelines during the offensive against Baitullah Mehsud in neighboring South Warizistan.
However, Bahadur’s spokesman Ahmedullah Ahmedi [who spoke over the phone from an undisclosed location] told reporters, “Our leadership has decided that as long as U.S. drone attacks continue and security forces stay here, there will be no peace agreement.” The BBC also cited him adding that the group “would now carry out attacks on military targets in the region until the army left and U.S. drones strikes were halted.”
In the past, reported the Wall Street Journal, the rivalry between the two militant commanders and the peace deal had helped Pakistan’s military focus on Mehsud. Now, noted the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan the end of the agreement “leaves the army facing a near impossible task – no one has ever defeated a combined insurgency in the Waziristan area.” The Pakistani government on Tuesday sought to quell such speculation, claiming the peace deal had been signed with the tribal elders and not with Taliban militants. In an interview with BBC World Radio yesterday, Interior Minister Rehman Malik further insisted that countering Bahadur’s group would not be “that difficult,” affirming, “we will take over” [the Waziristan area].
Pakistan’s ongoing military offensive has garnered a continuous stream of news headlines. However, given that journalists have largely been denied access to the frontline, media reports are often a regurgitation of contradictory information provided by both military and militant spokesmen. The difficulty is always extracting the “truth” from what both sides want us to believe. For example, noted the NY Times, “For the past month and a half, the Pakistani military has claimed success in retaking the Swat Valley from the Taliban, clawing back its own territory from insurgents who only a short time ago were extending their reach toward the heartland of the country.”
However, the news agency on June 28 offered a rare glimpse into Swat’s aftermath, noting, “…from a helicopter flying low over the valley last week, the low-rise buildings of Mingora…now deserted and under a 24-hour curfew, appeared unscathed. In the surrounding countryside, farmers had harvested wheat and red onions on their unscarred land.” The NYT added, “All that is testament to the fact that the Taliban mostly melted away without a major fight, possibly to return when the military withdraws or to fight elsewhere, military analysts say.”
This snapshot of Swat, coupled with the fact that the military has failed to kill or capture a top Taliban commander, makes the idea of “success” all the more abstract, and the new push into “the far more treacherous terrain” of South Waziristan worrisome. Are we essentially going down the same inconclusive path of military offensives past? Rehman Malik, in his talk with BBC World Radio, reassured the skeptics by simply noting, “measures have been taken to prevent these militants from regrouping,” (he would not specify the measures so as not to compromise the secrecy of the mission).
This is not to say the military has not made gains in this new offensive. In fact, in the perception management side of the war, the Pakistani Army has indicated a new resolve in countering militancy, most interestingly demonstrated by the names of these military offensives. In a recent study by Shuja Nawaz entitled, FATA – A Most Dangerous Place, he wrote, “In the Swat district, the first operation by the regular army was named Operation Mountain Viper, not exactly a name that inspired participants or local residents or drew them into the task for fighting Islamist militants…” However, the new commander of the troops in Swat, Maj. Gen. Janjua in 2007 “launched a fresh operation named Rah-e-Haq or the Path to Truth (i.e., the true Islamic faith), aimed at wresting the Islamic ground from the insurgents by claiming to act in the name of the true Islam.”
The army’s recent offensive titles indicate a further evolution of this trend. On May 16, 2009, the military announced that Operation Rah-e-Haq (4) in Malakand would be renamed Operation Rah-e-Rast, or the Path to Righteousness. Most recently, Rah-e-Nijaat, or the Path to Salvation, was attached to the military’s operation in South Waziristan. Last week, COAS Gen. Ashfaq Kayani told reporters, “We are conducting this operation to bring misguided people back on the right path…They are not fighting for Islam. Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and we know how to protect it.”
What seems to be occurring therefore, is an effort on the military’s part to reframe the war in a language digestible by the public. They are challenging the convoluted interpretations of Islam and Sharia espoused by these Taliban-linked militants, and are no longer allowing them to hijack and leverage this space. However, while certainly a part of unconventional warfare, winning will still take more than just good PR. As Shuja Nawaz noted, “Troops, training, and equipment are one part of a two-part approach to counterinsurgency. The other, and some might say more important part is the underlying political dynamic and governance, without which military actions will fail to gain traction or produce a lasting solution.” In our case, it means we once again concede to the militants.
Very good post highlighting all the ambiguities of rahe rast which is seeming more like Rahe Raz these days. With such a small amount of damage how exactly did the army fight a toe to toe battle as was portrayed..the danger is not in the fact that militants melted away, the top leadership imo was going to do that anyways, and perhaps they were not there at all however the creepy rumor that some groups were alerted is what really gets to me. If this is the case then the old game is once again at play and we are being made fools off.
Thanks Faisal,
I couldn’t find the Herald article you pointed me towards earlier that mentioned some of these rumors. Would you mind explaining further what the mag said about some militants being alerted to the Army coming in?
to be honest i have had no idea as yet whats going on up there these days.. mostly news is simply gibberish, thankyou for sharing some insights…
Wondering how many months or years wud be required by them to finish what they started …
Thanks for the comment Owais,
At this rate, who knows. I do know that a few weeks is far too premature to call an operation over, and the South Waziristan offensive (Rah-e-Nijaat) will be by far the hardest dimension of the war.
If you do want to read a good piece on the whole thing, I didn’t get to include Christine Fair’s awesome article in the WSJ entitled, “Policing Pakistan”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124630267412469431.html
Basically both she and Hasan Abbas have been advocating for the counterinsurgency effort to be led by Pakistan’s police, and encourage more U.S. aid to be diverted to bolstering these forces, since only 2.2% of US funding to Pakistan has gone towards assisting the police.
So I never get to put in all the information I collect to write these long-winded analyses, but I thought this was interesting:
Naming operations seems to have started in Germany in the last 2 years of WWI, when Germans used code names for operational security, but began to choose names that were both memorable and inspirational.
Winston Churchill was actually so fascinated with the art of naming operations that he set forth directives on naming them. He said, “After all, the world is wide and intelligent thought will readily supply an unlimited number of names which do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way and do not enable some widow or mother to say her son was killed in an operation called ‘Bunny Hug’ or ‘Ballyhoo.’”
British naming conventions are pretty dull in the 21st. If I remember correctly, they pick a word from the next letter in the alphabet from the last one. No Operation Enduring Freedom for us, oh no.
Pakistan’s past operation names were pretty powerful sounding, although they weren’t as strategic as the recent Islamic titles. Last year’s offensive to root out Baitullah Mehsud, for example, was entitled Operation Zalzala or Operation Earthquake, and one of the recent offensives names was Operation Black Thunder (coincidentally also the name of the Indian military offensive to tackle Sikh militants).
lol… wondering how do they sound… the names for British operations…
10 Downing street also amuses me… using the address is keeping things simple.. i guess we also have some like that here.. “90″ for MQM …then there is 70 clifton for ppp
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The herald article i was referring to, (tried to get an online link to it but dawns web site is weird and broken from parts) basically talk about how during the peace deal the army would intimate to the mitants which sector they were moving in so that fighting would not ensue as the militants instead of being a proper command and control outfit are more a ragtag bunch of groups who will fire upon anything with khaki color.
The article talks about the visit by reporters to mingora and how they witness only about 3 buildings damaged and nothing else, the writer wonders how a toe to toe fight for mingora which was supposed to be a militant stronghold could have taken place with so little destruction. He also mentions talking to some shop keepers there who claim to have only seen 8-12 dead militant bodies plus he wonders if the early warning structure mentioned above is still in effect?
The reporter also goes on to say that in areas which the army completes and declares “clean” militants have been seen openly moving around.
As far as my personal opinion is concerned i like to get it from the horses mouth. An employee of mine just returned from wana yesterday and he says and i quote “Sab ghaib ho gaye phir army ne operation shuruh kia”
foot soldiers die Kal, the brains and the generals always dissipate first, it is not hard to imagine forewarning with an army as big as ours and with many of them having trained these people in the past how tough would it be to leak out general guidelines of attack areas?
That is really interesting. I was aware of the warning structure occurring during the peace deal, but do we have tangible proof that it’s occurred now (other than the lack of destruction and the NYT piece)? I am skeptical about the military’s so-called success in these areas based on past precedent, but I also don’t want to be too pessimistic.
I think the fact that 6,100 militants have been killed but none of the Taliban leaders is also a significant point. It raises the question about the importance of killing the head of the snake. The main objective of the new offensive in South Waziristan is to arrest or kill Baitullah Mehsud and his top commanders, so I think a lot of what we deem as “success” will be contingent on this operation.
This is why i was always in the favor of SGS going in rather than the entire army artilerry gunships et all.
Surgical strikes would have meant very minor displacement and perhaps we could have gotten some big wigs on the ground rather than looking for them in caves as we are now
What you say about the NYT reprting is interesting. I had noticed myself that they seemed to be exaggerating Pakistan’s success in battling the Taliban. I think other news sources that I generally would not refer to, such as the Washington Post, have been more accurate and forthright with their portrayal of the army’s fight against the Taliban.