Extremists to be ousted from Pakistan’s tribal belt within two months, general says

The Globe and Mail - Commander warns that $1-billion in development funds needed to keep area from reverting to al-Qaeda, Taliban

Major combat operations against extremists in Pakistan’s tribal belt will be completed within two months, including the clearance of North Waziristan, according to the Pakistani general in charge of the special paramilitary force for the area.

However, Major-General Tariq Khan, head of the Frontier Corps, warned that the future stability of the tribal belt, which runs along the border with Afghanistan and includes Waziristan and the Khyber Pass, depends as much on economic factors as military ones. The international community must come up with $1-billion to develop the area, he said, or risk seeing it revert to a base for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

In an interview, Gen. Khan said that five of the seven “agencies” of the zone, formerly known as the Federally Administered Tribal Area, are now under government control, with operations remaining to be concluded only in Orakzai and North Waziristan.

“This will finish in a couple of months. We’ll take care of all of them. We’re just waiting for the major operations, like Orakzai and North Waziristan, to finish, to spare us the troops to start changing our methodology,” said Gen. Khan, a swashbuckling officer with a reputation for tackling the extremists head-on.

“Instead of kinetic, concentrated operations, we will start search and cordon and sting operations – for which actually you need more boots on the ground.”

The West has long been pressing for action in North Waziristan, a base for al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, one of the most feared insurgent groups in Afghanistan. Control of North Waziristan is seen as crucial to securing the flank of U.S.-led forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Gen. Khan confirmed that the North Waziristan operation has started and disclosed that unlike the offensive last year in South Waziristan, which involved 25,000 troops steamrollering across the area, the strategy in North Waziristan is to carry out a series of smaller actions.

“I think the kind of operations they’re going to do [in North Waziristan] are going to be progressive. They’re going to squeeze them out of areas, rather than carry out hard-core kinetic operations. They are going to be incremental,” said Gen. Khan, who has led the 45,000-men strong Frontier Corps since September of 2008.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al-Qaeda and the Taliban fled across the border to the tribal area, one of the poorest and most remote parts of Pakistan, turning it into an extremist fief.

Gen. Khan began the assault on the tribal belt with an operation in Bajaur in August, 2008. His troops subsequently tackled each agency in turn – most dramatically with an offensive in South Waziristan that kicked off in October, 2009.

Once the combat phase is complete, the plan is to search every house for links to the extremists, with the goal of eliminating the remnants of the Pakistani Taliban leadership.

The Frontier Corps, which recruits exclusively from the tribal zone that it polices, came under a mass assault in the Khyber agency Wednesday, losing six soldiers for 20 insurgents killed. The Khyber agency borders Orakzai, where the Frontier Corps began an operation last week in tandem with the offensive in North Waziristan. To date, more than 200 militants have been killed in Orakzai, which became a refuge for extremists fleeing military action in other parts of the tribal belt, South Waziristan in particular.

Gen. Khan said the tribal area must not be neglected by the international community, as it was after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, or it could again fall prey to al-Qaeda and its allies.

“We need $1-billion to bring stability to a land that caused pain to the entire world, and we saw that impact ultimately on the twin towers,” Gen. Khan said. “That’s not a lot of money to pacify a region that is the cause of global conflict.”

Under a plan developed by the Frontier Corps and Pakistan’s government, the money would be spent repairing roads and other infrastructure, building new schools and hospitals and developing agriculture and industry.

Special to The Globe and Mail