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Pakistan Army Begins Ground Assault on Militants Pakistani Army Begins Ground Assault on Militants
(about 9 hours later)
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The Pakistani military said Monday that it had launched a ground assault in North Waziristan, marking the most determined effort yet to seize control of a lawless tribal district that has become a hub of Islamist militancy. LONDON — For a decade now, the tribal town of Miram Shah in North Waziristan has been a slow-burn embarrassment to the Pakistani military.
After two weeks of air and artillery strikes during which more than 500,000 people fled the area, soldiers moved into Miram Shah, the main town of North Waziristan, early on Monday, military and intelligence officials said. Right at the gates of an army base, Taliban kidnappers used the town telephone exchange to make ransom demands. Suicide bombers bided their time in high-walled compounds there before attacking Pakistan’s major cities. Notorious militants like the former Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud kept houses a few miles from the base.
In a statement confirming the operation, the military press office said that infantry and special forces units had carried out house-to-house searches in the town, uncovering militant tunnels and bomb factories. The statement said that 15 militants had been killed and three soldiers wounded in the ground offensive, but did not offer details of the fighting. Miram Shah attracted jihadists from across the region, and the world – Punjabi sectarian killers, Uighurs fighting China, Al Qaeda commanders planning mayhem in the West. “The bazaar is bustling with Chechens, Uzbeks, Russians, Bosnians, some from E.U. countries, and of course our Arab brothers,” wrote David Headley, an American who joined the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, in 2009.
The military was continuing to direct tank and artillery fire on militant targets in Mir Ali, the other major town in North Waziristan, it said. The Pakistani military moved to erase that blemish early Monday, when soldiers fanned out across the town, occupying the bus stands and shops of central Miram Shah as they began the process of seizing the town back from militant control, the military said.
No independent confirmation of the military’s claim was available. Local and foreign news media outlets are not allowed to enter the volatile tribal region, which is along the border with Afghanistan, and journalists are dependent on official press statements about the developments of the military assault. Infantry soldiers and special forces units moved from house to house, uncovering networks of tunnels and bomb factories, the military said in a statement. At least 15 militants were killed and three soldiers injured in sporadic exchanges of gun and rocket fire, it said, in an account that could not be independently verified.
The military operation in North Waziristan started on June 15, one week after militants based in the district carried out an audacious assault on Pakistan’s largest airport, in Karachi, that left at least 36 people including 10 attackers dead. Last week, suspected Taliban militants attacked a passenger jet as it landed at Peshawar airport, killing a passenger and causing several international airlines to suspend their services to the northwestern city. The military operation marked the second phase of a broader operation against the Pakistani Taliban and allied militants. For the past two weeks, the military carried out air and artillery attacks in North Waziristan as up to 500,000 civilians fled the area for neighboring districts.
In the past decade, North Waziristan has become a sanctuary for an array of militant groups including the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network and Al Qaeda. It has borne the brunt of the American drone campaign in Pakistan’s tribal belt, and American officials have frequently pressed Pakistan to shut down the sanctuaries. Ostensibly, the North Waziristan operation was prompted by an audacious militant assault on Pakistan’s largest airport, in Karachi, on June 8 that left at least 36 people including 10 attackers dead. But military officials said the Waziristan offensive had been in the works for months, as government-led peace talks with the Taliban faltered, then collapsed.
The Pakistani Taliban and allied Uzbek militants, both of which claimed responsibility for the Karachi attack, are the principal targets of the current operation, officials say. But the military spokesman has insisted that the operation will also target the Haqqani network, which fights in Afghanistan and has longstanding ties with Pakistani military intelligence. Now more than 30,000 troops are involved in operation Zarb-e-Azb, or “Strike of the Prophet’s Sword,” including the elite Special Services Group. Information on the fighting, however, is highly limited. Waziristan is a restricted and perilous area for journalists in normal times, and in recent weeks the military has pushed even local reporters out.
Still, reports from different sources suggest that some militants have fled the area in anticipation of the operation. In its news release on Monday, the military press office said that 376 militants and 17 soldiers had been killed in fighting so far. The Pakistani Taliban, whose forces have reportedly fled towns like Miram Shah for the thickly forested mountains of North Waziristan or safer neighboring districts, have not offered a toll.
Last week, Taliban commanders said that some fighters had moved into nearby South Waziristan, while others were headed for Baluchistan Province, where the Afghan Taliban have long enjoyed sanctuary. An American official said that Haqqani commanders, who appeared to have been tipped off by Pakistani intelligence, had moved into Afghanistan. The military’s implicit claim that no civilians have died seems unlikely – particularly given its track record of such casualties in previous campaigns in the tribal belt. In surrounding areas, refugees from Waziristan told of a more indiscriminate assault.
Still, a fight is looming for the Pakistani military in North Waziristan, a remote mountainous area that has thwarted conventional military forces since the British colonial era. Local residents said that Uzbek militants had fled into the thickly-forested mountains of the Shawal Valley, where they may present a serious challenge to the military should the ground operation reach there. In Peshawar on Saturday, a 15-year-old girl named Zubana lay on a hospital bed at the Khyber Teaching Hospital, her mother and two brothers at her side. Her lower body was swathed in bandages that covered what doctors described as serious burns.
More than 30,000 troops, including the paramilitary Frontier Corps and soldiers from the elite Special Services Group are involved in operation Zarb-e-Azb, which means “Strike of the Prophet’s Sword.” The military says that 376 militants and 17 soldiers have been killed in the operation. The Pakistani Taliban have not given an estimate of the death toll. “I was preparing lunch for my husband when there was an explosion, and the room went on fire,” said Zubana, who has just one name. “I don’t know what happened after that. My mother says our house was destroyed. I wish I had died.”
For now, the Pakistani drive is concentrated in North Waziristan’s urban areas. An intelligence official said that ground troops backed by tanks, artillery and gunship helicopters launched their attack on Miram Shah at first light, seizing a bus stand and Matches Camp, an area where many Afghans lived before the military offensive. Zubana moaned from pain as she spoke. Her mother, Toraan, aid her daughter looked like a piece of “burned coal” when she rescued her from the rubble of their home in Khaisoor Zar, south of Mir Ali town. She believed the army had carried out an airstrike near their house. “We saw big planes in the sky that suddenly started dropping bombs,” she said.
“This is the beginning of the search, eliminate, clear and control phase. There is no turning back,” said another security official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Troops will be fanning out and clearing the areas in a phased manner.” The attack occurred on June 9, one day after the militant assault on Karachi airport, she said. The military reported retaliatory airstrikes in Khyber district, 100 miles to the northeast, on that day. It did not report any strikes in Mir Ali, although it is not unusual for military actions in the secluded tribal belt to go unreported.
The military has so far met with sporadic resistance in Miram Shah, the official said. Three soldiers were wounded in a rocket attack in the town on Sunday, while a second group came under gunfire from a residential area known as Teachers Colony. The military responded with artillery fire that killed eight militants, some of them from Punjab, the official said. Military experts say they expect Pakistani soldiers will face relatively light resistance in the main towns of North Waziristan, Miram Shah and Mir Ali, but may face heavier fighting if they push into the surrounding mountains.
About 500,000 villagers have fled into adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, creating the country’s biggest conflict-driven humanitarian crisis since 2009. The United Nations says that at least 66,000 people have fled into Khost Province in neighboring Afghanistan. The determined drive follows years of American pressure to crack down on militant havens in North Waziristan, which has been the target of at least 273 Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes since 2004 – more than any other area in the world.
American officials accused Pakistan’s generals of avoiding a Waziristan operation to protect their links to the Haqqani network, a fighting group focused on battling Western forces and the government in Afghanistan and that has longstanding ties to the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Pakistani officials staunchly denied any collusion with the Haqqanis ahead of the offensive, but admit that their spies maintain ties to the group.
Whatever the exact nature of that relationship, in launching the North Waziristan ground assault, Pakistani officials seem to have acknowledged that allowing militants to control a major town was bad news for their own country, as well as for the West.
Militants flooded into North Waziristan after 2001, at first fleeing the American invasion of Afghanistan and, as the area became a rear base for the Taliban insurgency, arriving to join the fight against NATO and Afghan forces. But the proliferation of jihadis also strengthened the Pakistani Taliban, which drew money and inspiration from the outside fighters, emboldening them to form a formidable threat to the Pakistani state.
The potency of that challenge was underscored by the June 8 attack on the Karachi airport, and, more recently, an attack on a landing passenger jet at Peshawar airport that killed one passenger and caused several airlines to suspend their services to the area.
Monday’s assault on Miram Shah included the mobilization of tanks, artillery and gunship helicopters in support of infantry forces, a senior security official said in Peshawar, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This is the beginning of the search, eliminate, clear and control phase,” he said. “There is no turning back.”
About 500,000 villagers have fled into adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, creating the country’s biggest conflict-driven humanitarian crisis since 2009. The United Nations says that at least 66,000 people have also fled into Khost Province in neighboring Afghanistan.
Inside Pakistan, refugees have complained bitterly about lodging conditions and inadequate facilities provided by the government at local hospitals in northwestern towns.Inside Pakistan, refugees have complained bitterly about lodging conditions and inadequate facilities provided by the government at local hospitals in northwestern towns.