To Die For.....the War at Wana

ferozek #17: There is actually very little to chose from between the leadership of the tribal areas of FATA, and the leadership of Pakistan. That is why I can never understand why certain people support the Army actions against tribal leaders in Wana, but not against tribal/fedual (same evil, different names) belonging to PPP/PML/ANP/Baluchi parties, in the govt. Consider the following:

- The leaderships of the tribal areas are elected, through a jirga systems of maliks etc., in which the common citizen`s views are immaterial. The leaderships of Pakistan`s Assemblies are elected through a similarly screwed up system

- The leadership of the tribal areas is 100% feudal/tribal. The leadership of Pakistan is 66% feudal/tribal.

- The areas ruled by the Afridis etc. are backwards, illiterate, with no rights for women. The areas ruled by Bhuttos, Jamalis, Legharis, Fahims, Bugtis (the top leadership of Pakistan) are equally illiterate, backwards, with no rights for women. Jamalis` homeland has a 3% female literacy rate. Baluchistan is, in fact, more backwards than NWFP. Honor killings are a norm in Bhutto`s rural Sind land. And Amin Fahim, has four sisters married to the Quran.

I believe people need to follow one standard and principle. If one wants to follow the Constitutions and legal systems, then one must oppose what is being done in the tribal areas. It is not being done under any sort of a law. It is being done under US pressure to a great extent. However, the US has diliberately ensured that its, ``War on Terrorism`` is fought outside any sort of international law. Hence, this is an extra-legal action.

After all, Pakistan`s leading democrats and Chief Ministers like Bugti, Pir of Pogara etc. keep personal militias. The former`s tribe is known for blowing up more than its share of gas pipelines. Why shouldn`t the Army go and bomb their houses also?

The other option is to follow the rules that I subscribe to:

I support the removal of all tribalism/feudalism from Pakistan, through any means. I could care less whether it is in Wana or in Larkana. Whether it is an elected leader of a jirga, or an elected leader of PPP. I support it through Constitutional or extra-Constitutional terms. I don`t care if it is the Army, Navy or PAF that does the removing. I don`t care if it is the civil services or the labor unions that does it. I don`t even care if it is the Mullah who removes the tribals/feudals. I will support him.

This is the basis of why I will always support whomever is trying to take out tribal leaders - be they secular or relgious. This is why I supported the coup of Musharraf. This is also why, until tribals/feudals are removed from Pakistan, I have very little regard for Pakistani styled democracy (after all the Wana tribal leaders are, ``democratically``elected also).

In this sense, I think Urstruly`s stance is more principled than those of most others, i.e he opposes extra-Constitutional action against all tribals - secular ones, religious ones, liked ones and disliked ones, (Wana and Larkana). I support extra-Constituional actions against all tribal/feudal leaders (Wana and Larkana). I disagree with Urstruly completely, but I support the fact that his stance is principled.

What I cannot understand is the hypocrisy of those who support Army action against one group of tribals (Wana) and oppose action against the group they like (Larkana).

10 out of 10 marks to Musharraf, from my side, on going after Gul Khan Afridi in Wana. And going after Benazir Bhutto in Larkana. All these feudal/tribal, ``leaders`` need to be hanged by their balls (for males and other body parts for females), and be forced to work 9-5 jobs like the rest of us. It shouldn`t matter whether they went to Harvard or to Darul-Aloom. What should matter is how suppressive they are of people living on their persoanl lands.

Just because some of them join the PPP or PML, while others remain in Wana-land, does not make the formers crimes any less forgivable. Other than the secular, ``intelligensia`` (which supports secular tribal leaders of Larkana, but opposes religious ones of Wana) and the maulvi brigade (which supports religous tribal leaders of Wana and opposes the secular ones of Larkana), I think the rest of urban Pakistan is starting to see the equivalence in both groups. That is why no one has come out on the streets to oppose Musharraf`s actions against BB or against Gul Khan Afridi.......

And if shouldn`t matter, whether they are, ``playing according to the script,`` or not.

I have little sympathy for the fundamentalists in Wana. They go to others` countries and make trouble; those guys should be put down if this is what they are bent on doing. When they cause trouble at one place the entire globe is virtually shaken, they are a menance to our civilization.

#17 ferozk
#16 nazarhayatkhan
#10 hamidm2


Good intentions and wishful thinking don’t solve problems. Legally the Sardari system ended in Pakistan in 1974. But has it really ended? The failures of the legal system, courts, and the police etc. have been pushing people back to the archaic systems. Feudalism and Tribal systems won’t end by some administrative actions or by military actions. A persistent economic agenda and reforms would end the system. Still the cultural and social impact of the system would not end in another 100 or so years. Feudalism won’t end if you take away their lands. It will just help the process. The fragmentation of the society will end the feudal. How swiftly would that happen, would depend on economic activity in the whole country.
Can they integrate the tribal belt into mainstream Pakistan? Yes! They can do it with an administrative action but can anybody take that admin action? Not now, not in another 25 years. Integrating the tribal belt would mean affecting the demographics of the NWFP province. Adding another 5 million pashtuns into NWFP would seriously alter the delicate balance between the Hazaras and the Pashtuns. It would require lots of study and political will on the part of the govt, and nobody should expect that from the Mushy government.

The Pakistan govt is faking people into believing that foreign Jihadi were in the tribal area w/o its knowledge. The tribal despite being “azad” are actually not azad. Federal govt has huge structure in the tribal areas and has it since the British period. The Indian reservations in the US are exempt from lots of federal and state laws but it does not mean that the US government does not know what goes on there.

Similarly, the Pakistan govt knows fully what is going on in the tribal area. It has a network of informers in the area and deep relations with all sardars, maliks, and people right in the heart of the tribal belt. So please don’t assume that the fed govt in Pakistan is naïve or simple. Why those foreign jehadi were not prevented from digging in that area before last month does not require a whole lot of adding the pieces of puzzle together.

These poor tribesmen are a pawn in a bigger game. Can you even believe by looking at the pictures being shown on TV that these middle aged, uneducated, uncouth people can harass or even intimidate the Pakistan Army or the US army? Spare me the thought.

Just think where those fancy flatbed trucks and Land cruisers are coming from. Who is paying for the ammunitions and luxuries in the tribal area? The US and the Pak govt. have blocked all public donations to the jehadi still, jehadi are not short of money. Follow the money and you would know who is behind the whole saga of OBL and his cohorts.

Try to think about OBL grievance with the US and the Saudi regime to grasp the situation. Killing the poor hillbillies is just a smokescreen.

Urstruly at # 24:

Your concerns would have been correct in the past when there were supportive forces across the border.

Moreover, not all tribes and not all the agencies are involved in the confrontation.

There could be resentment and even anti-state feelings for short duration of time, but eventually this will come to a pass. MMA has rightly decided to dilute the level of demonstrations to stage low-key protests, because it also knows the sensitivities. PML N and PPPP of BB are silent on the matter, but they do want a debate in the parliament, which has already begun.

Most importantly for you and me, the armymen who have died are also Pakhtoons.

I would request you to read an exchange of posts between Tauheed and myself on other topic viz. Musharraf will die, where I have posted some facts from close to area.

Btw, thanks for continuing to mention in your posts Indian military`s killings in custody and fake encounters of innocent Kashmiris in its held part at a time when the world`s attention is focused on other matters.

It appears the guys escaped in a tunnel a mile long. This surely should take the cake. I mean all those thousands of pakistani soldiers (hundreds of them dead) with the latest military surv. equipment and yet these guys manage to evade the pakistani army using a 2000 year old strategem - I wonder f they were allowed to escape (there was a peaceful pow-wow between the tribal cheifs and the army recently - maybe an understanding was reached ). Anyway here is the news article

from AP, available at

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040322/ap_on_re_as/al_qaida_hunt&cid=516&ncid=716

title: Al-Qaida Suspects May Have Fled in Tunnel

WANA, Pakistan - Top al-Qaida terrorists may have escaped a siege by thousands of Pakistani soldiers through several secret tunnels leading from mud fortresses to a dry mountain stream near the border with Afghanistan (news - web sites), a security chief said Monday.

The longest tunnel found so far was more than 1 mile long and led from the homes of two local men — Nek Mohammed and Sharif Khan — to a stream near the frontier, said Brig. Mahmood Shah, head of security for Pakistan`s tribal regions.


``There is a possibility that the tunnel may have been used at the start of the operation,`` Shah told journalists in Peshawar, the provincial capital. He said the tunnels began at the homes in the village of Kaloosha and led in the direction of a mountain range that straddles the border.


Three senior officials have told AP that they believe al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri may have been at the site, though the government has repeatedly said it does not know who is inside. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Thursday that a ``high-value`` target was likely involved.


The militants may have used the tunnel to escape during the disastrous first day of the operation on Mar. 16, when at least 15 soldiers were killed in fierce fighting. Still, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the commander of the operation, said over the weekend that authorities believe an important terrorist remains inside, based on the level of resistance of the holdouts.


Pakistan`s military said it was conducting DNA tests to identify six suspected foreign terrorists killed in the fighting, but would not elaborate on whether they included any important terror figure.


Five bodies of what appeared to be 25- to 30-year-old men were displayed to journalists at a military mortuary in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital Islamabad, late Sunday. Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian surgeon, is 52 years old.


The bodies were laid out on stretchers and in open coffins in bloodied clothes.


Military officials said they were all foreigners, but it was impossible for journalists to determine their nationality. They said the sixth body had decomposed and that it would have been inhumane to show it.


``At this moment, whatever information we have about the tests we would not like to give out until we are 200 percent sure who they are,`` army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told a press conference.


``For us, every foreigner who is caught or killed, is important because we do not know who they are,`` Sultan told AP earlier. ``We took the decision to do DNA tests to confirm the identities of these people.``


``I cannot say if any among them is al-Zawahri,`` he said.


In Wana on Monday, an 18-member tribal peace delegation crossed through a tight military cordon for talks with elders of the Yargul Khel tribe, believed to be fighting alongside the al-Qaida militants.


The delegation, carrying a white flag, was bringing three government demands: that the fighters free 12 soldiers and two government officials taken captive last week; that they hand over tribesmen involved in the fighting; and that they kick out any foreigners or show the military where to track them down.


Shah said that ``in light of the past experience we are not very hopeful`` the delegation would succeed.


Also Monday, Gen. John Abizaid, leader of the U.S. Central Command, was in Pakistan on an unannounced visit, Sultan said. He said a top army official met with Abizaid — who oversees U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq (news - web sites) — and insisted the trip had nothing to do with the offensive in Wana.


Some 5,000-6,000 Pakistani forces have been fighting 400-500 foreign militants and tribesmen holding out in fortress-like compounds under siege in Pakistan`s largest military operation in its tribal regions near Afghanistan since the government threw its support behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism in late 2001.





Shah said 123 suspects have been arrested in the week-old offensive. He said the homes of 13 tribesmen accused of harboring the terrorists were leveled on Sunday and Monday.

Shahzad Uddin, a resident in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, reported fighting resumed between army troops and militants for three hours before dawn in Duz Ghondai, a village about 5 miles to the west, the scene of earlier battles.

Shah said there had been no fire since the tribal delegation arrived at around 10 a.m. Monday. But he refused to call the lull a cease-fire, and said fighting would resume if the militants refuse to surrender.

Last week the military reported at least 17 soldiers and 26 militants had died in the initial fighting, and local officials say two dozen local people died in shooting over the weekend.

In Afghanistan, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told the AP on Sunday that the United States was ``very encouraged`` by the ongoing Pakistani offensive. He said senior Taliban and al-Qaida leaders were plotting attacks on Afghan and U.S. targets from Pakistan.

``We know several key Taliban figures are there, and there is some sense that some of the remaining al-Qaida leaders are in the border area on the other side,`` Khalilzad said.

Shah reiterated a pledge not to turn any captured Pakistanis over to a foreign country, presumably the United States. That promise did not apply to the foreign militants.

Security officials said their prisoners included Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and ethnic Uighurs from China`s predominantly Muslim Xinjiang province. They added it is difficult to distinguish the foreigners from locals, as they have often lived in the region for a long time and speak the local Pashto language.

The operation has forced thousands of villagers from their homes, and provoked deep anger at the army. According to local government officials and intelligence officers, about two dozen local people were killed in attacks on five vehicles Saturday.

In the neighboring tribal region of North Waziristan, attackers fired four rockets at a paramilitary training school near the town of Miran Shah on Sunday night, wounding one soldier, a government official there said on the condition of anonymity.

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Congrats... All Pakistanis.

We have just got our very own Kurdistan. Say thank to faujis.

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Wana is in tribal areas who are a part of Pakistan but only a few Pakistani policies are implemented there through political agents. Due to this very lose link with Pakistan, this area is the centre of smugglers and islamic terrorists. Government has always been trying to avoid conflicts with them bacause these people are good fighters and can create troubles if in direct confrontation with the government.

These people have very strong link with Afghanistan (even more stronger than Pakistan as at each sensitive moment, they take the side of Afghanistan). From Russian war to the war against *terrorism, these people always sided Afghanis no matter if it was supported by Pakistan Government or no. Even in 2001, Sufi Muhammad blocked the traffic on Silk route when Pakistan didn`t allow his Pashtun men to enter Afghanistan. Pakistan again avoiding conflict with them allowed them to enter afghanistan where Tehreek-e-Nifaaz-e-Shariat-e Muhammadi sent 10000 pro-Taliban tribal elements. As a result of war, those people were killed there.

Now coming to recent situation: There are Uzbeks, Tajiks, Arabs, Chechans and the hard-liners of Xingjiang province of China living in those tribal areas having full support of tribesmen there. (Not to mention here that due to Taliban movement, in Chinese Province also, an islamic movement started resulting in temporarily bad relations with China).
Whenever in the past, government needed some culprits from these tribesmen, government did it through its political agent who conducted talks with the elders of these tribes: Jirga. Jirga leaders often take actions according to government wishes hence save there independent status. In the past, it has happened that whenever, they failed to act upon government policies, military intervened the situation.

This time also, Pakistan asked them to handover the terrorists to the government. Government said that foreign terrorists will be sent back to their country and local terrorists will be punished locally. Dead lines were decided and these people were given a good time period to act upon Government`s advice.

By the way, what are the Uzbeks, Arabs and Chechens doing on Pakistani land. Do these dirty people think that Pakistan is a poroper place for their filthy ideas? Do they think that they have each and every right to create problems for Pakistan. (Sorry for using too many adjectives here but it is true).

Well! Dead lines were given. It was already advised everybody that they should temporarily vacate the areas before the operation starts. Even now, for the ones who don`t want to fight, Government has instructions that they should raise white flags as a symbol of peace and after that they will not be atacked.

Deadlines were over. These people didn`t return back the terrorists. Rather, they provided them shelters in the mud made forts.

So what else should Government do than? Should we say : ``OK, OK ! Keep it up. Keep on spreading terrorism. Keep on planning how to kill Musharraf. Keep on spreading terrorism in the whole world. We are proud of you. Either It is Chechynia, Afghanistan or Arab, We are the Thaikedaars of the whole world. huh.``.

Operation started. Army had to face stiff resistance. Many army men were killed. I can see their pictures and feel sad that while saving the interest of terrorists, these people have started providing resistance against their own Government.

Well! an anybody tell me, Why these people don`t raise white flags if they don`t want to be killed? Why some of them are fighting alongwith terrirists? Why these people didn`t obey deadlines ? Why these people are supporting terrorists coming from other countries?

P.S: I am sorry for the women and children killed. But whenever there is a war, such sad incidents happen. It seems childish by taking such examples and proving that whole operation is bad.
BTW, I have also listened that terrorists are using civilians as human shield and it were terrorists who kiled those 12 civilians.


However, The time has come to eradicate terrorism from the lands of Pakistan. Whoever sides with the terrorsts is also a terrorist. If he gets killed, I have no sympathy for him.
These terrorists has already given us a very bad name. Now, they will have to suffer for what they did.
I am with the government for what it is doing.

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Romair #15 - EXACTLY my point. Thank you for your eloquent post. If the goal is to end the lawlessness of the tribal areas, lets begin with the jageer daars of interior Punjab and Sindh who enslave their communities while donning the titles of ``Pir`` and ``Makhdoom``. They kidnap women, tolerate throwing acids on girl`s faces, do honor killings. They prevent opening of schools in their kingdoms so as not to dry up free labor, all the while sending their own kids to schools in America.

Lets declare war on these landowners. Lets have an equitable distribution of land in Punjab. Once we have done that, I will wholeheartedly agree to go after the same kind of people in tribal areas.

I wonder if the mommentum will be maintained. I fear there will be compromises a la logique souvent

re: nazarhayatkhan # 16

Nazar, the problem is that most Pakistanis have a romantic vision of these tribal lands based on the myths created by the British of the ``noble savage``. The people in those tribal belts are criminals at their worst, because the industry of these regions is theft, murder and revenge.

On a larger issue, the opportunity to end the practice of tribal autonomy is a god-send, because as long as these tribals exist, free from Pakistani government`s mandate, the issue of the western border with Afghanistan will remain unsettled. If for nothing else, these tribes must be pacified and the border demarcated clearly once and for all.

re: Romair # 15

First of all, Jamali was not elected; he was appointed prime minister of Pakistan. I agree with you that there is a high level of hypocrisy in Pakistani politics and we are all responsible for the mess. Electability of the feudals in Pakistani politics is an age old issue and on this issue, I agree with you in the sense that I have no explanation for our national myopia of electing feudals to public offices.

As to supporting Jamali and not supporting another tribal in FATA, the simple answer is that Jamali is playing according to the script.

Ciao

zehra

Also freozk # 13, Hamidm2 # 10

For Pakistan, 9/11 has been a blessing in disguise in many ways. We need to thank the Americans for forcing our leaders to get after the Taliban - something for which they, both khakis & civilian politicians, did not have the guts/courage.

Then the Americans are after sorting out our Madressas & Syllabus, something that we should have been doing on our own.

And now these ``Illaqa Ghair`` outlaws who have been playing a double game between Afghanistan & Pakistan for the last 56 years - and were not accountable to anyone. The place has been a heaven for all kinds of hoodlums from all over the world - not for the Pukhtunwali, the pushtoon hospitality tradition, but for simple money. (The nationalist Pahtoons & Jihad do not mix)

This the first time, probably in centuries, that they are sandwhiched by two anti-forces on both sides of the border - and it has the support of the world community.

So getting these ``Qabeelas`` under some kind of law NOW is a god-given oppurtunity and should not be missed. (It is also a good idea to keep this Army engaged and get its hands dirty)