IDSP-Pakistan VIEW: Can there be an end to this war? —Daud Khattak
April 27, 2010VIEW: Can there be an end to this war? —Daud Khattak
Courtesy to "Daily Times"
If the militants remained on the move with their weaponry, command
and control, and plans of fighting intact, then this anti-terror war is
not going to come to an end in the foreseeable future
Friday’s
attack on a convoy of army soldiers in North Waziristan and the fresh
wave of violence in parts of the newly-renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
signifies that armed Taliban are still as powerful as they were before
the launch of the much-hyped military operations in Malakand in early
2009 and in Waziristan late last year.
Besides the spate of
suicide and other bomb attacks, the militants have accelerated their
school destruction spree with full impunity in Mohmand, one of the
seven tribal agencies located just north of Peshawar; in Khyber,
another tribal agency encircling the city of Peshawar on the southeast
and east; and even in Peshawar city.
The surge in attacks,
suicide bombings, targeted killing and destruction of educational
institutions with terrorisation of schoolchildren and their parents are
continuing despite claims regarding the success of the military
operations in Swat and Waziristan.
It is quite unfortunate and,
to a larger extent, distressing that instead of wiping out the
armed-to-the-teeth Taliban in Swat, Waziristan, Bajaur or other red
zones of the country, the military operations seem to have
reinvigorated some old groups in recent months, adding to the list of
terrorist outfits operating in the name of lashkars, jaishes, etc.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
al-Alami, believed to be the same anti-Shia offshoot of
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi banned a few years ago, is the one that claimed the
bombing at a hospital in Quetta on April 16. The bomb attack was
carried out while members of the Shia sect came to the hospital with
the body of a bank manager, also a Shia, shot dead by unidentified
armed men.
The same group claimed responsibility for the
back-to-back suicide attacks in Kacha Pakha area of Kohat, where,
according to eyewitnesses, two burqa-clad bombers mowed down 41
internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had gathered in front of the UN
offices to collect free of cost food items on April 17.
The
tactics used in the blasts were the same as in Quetta. The first
explosion killed and injured only a few persons, said Khalid Omarzai,
Commissioner of Kohat Division, but there was another, more powerful
explosion when people came to help remove the bodies and shift the
injured to hospital. The aim was to inflict as many casualties as
possible and at the same time, to convey a message loud and clear both
to the government and members of the rival sect that the group and its
volunteers are powerful enough to target them anywhere.
A
similar attack was carried out in Karachi in February this year where a
bus carrying Shia Muslims was targeted first and when the dead and
injured were rushed to hospital, another explosion took place there,
wreaking more havoc. The latest was the suicide attack in Qissa Khwani
Bazaar of Peshawar where a police officer, belonging to the Shia sect,
was targeted, but 22 more people, mostly workers of a religious party —
Jamaat-e-Islami — were killed and over 40 injured on April 19.
Leaders
of the Jamaat-e-Islami, believed to be pro-Taliban, quickly declared
that their rally was not the target of the suicide attack to avoid the
ill feelings among its workers against the attackers and to avoid a row
with the perpetrators of the attack. The party rarely condemns suicide
attacks or other incidents of violence, arguing that what is happening
in the country is a reaction to the ‘wrong policies’ pursued by the
government of Pakistan and hence ‘justified’.
The same day
(April 19), a time device was exploded in front of the well-known
Police Public School, killing a five-year-old student and injuring
seven others, thus inculcating fear among the students and their
parents. Earlier, on April 13, an ex-nazim was shot dead along with
another person in broad daylight by armed men in Mingora, the
commercial town of Swat, where the security forces and police are
patrolling day and night, while a deadly suicide attack at a political
rally killed 53 people in Timergara, the main town in Lower Dir
district on April 5.
All these gory incidents happened despite
claims of successful operations against the Taliban and other
terrorists by the government functionaries and security officials, but
the occurrences are evidence of the fact that the Taliban are still
there, and as heady as they were before the military operations in Swat
and Waziristan.
Secondly, the fresh attacks by the
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami, which is a predominantly Punjab-based
organisation with most of its leadership from Punjab, against the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is led by Pashtuns in the tribal
belt, is another alarming factor in the prevailing situation in the
country. While the security forces, after capturing territory from the
TTP in Swat, Waziristan and Bajaur, are struggling against the
militants in Orakzai and parts of Khyber Agencies, the re-emergence of
sectarian violence, more powerful than the past, is going to affect the
gains achieved by the security forces at the very least, if not totally
reverse the process.
It is said and believed that militants
moved from Swat to Bajaur and Mohmand and from Waziristan to Orakzai
and Khyber following the military operations and thus they are
targeting the cities to put pressure on the government. But one simple
question that arises here is: what use is all the air power being
employed against them when they can move en masse from one area to
another and set up their bases so quickly to orchestrate coordinated
attacks against targets at their will?
If the Taliban can move
from one area to another so easily, then it is possible that Peshawar
will be the next battleground, following the intensification of the
ongoing military operation in Orakzai and then in Khyber and Mohmand,
as this northern city is encircled by the tribal or semi-tribal areas
on three sides.
And the final question is that if the militants
remained on the move with their weaponry, command and control, and
plans of fighting intact, then this anti-terror war is not going to
come to an end in the foreseeable future. Thus, more violence and more
bloodshed and the war-weary people would continue to ask: can there be
an end to this war?
The writer can be reached at khattakjr@gmail.com
Posted by ADP. Posted In : Daud Khattak
The people of Hazara have the right to demand a separate province in
their area, but they have no right to dictate a name of their choice on
the overwhelming majority of the Pakhtun
When we see the brutal face of alleged Islamic practices of the
Taliban that subjugates, insults, terrorises and finally kills, we
shake our heads in disbelief. We are collectively as a nation in denial
The popular anchorpersons’ power to make or break opinion creates an
arrogance in them that is displayed through condescending sneers and
mocking jeers, inciting their guests to lose their cool and be reduced
to a laughing stock
The IDPs request the government to open vocational centres in the
camp for training in employable skills like carpentry, masonry,
welding, electrical wiring, plumbing, etc. The IDPs also request for
vocational centres for income generation and skill development purposes
for the women IDPs, like embroidery and tailoring
The IDPs from Mohmand must not be forced to leave the camp. Let us
not forget that the people of Mohmand Agency, like people from
elsewhere in FATA, are paying the torturous price for the military
establishment’s policy of strategic depth 
Basically, the jirga is saying that it does not trust the military
establishment, which is leading the dialogue with the US. The military
establishment will follow the policy of strategic depth in Afghanistan,
which is the key cause of the sufferings of Pakhtuns on both sides of
the Durand Line
The Pakhtun culture is reflected in Ghaffar Khan’s non-violent
movement, in the mysticism of Rahman Baba’s poetry and in the
romanticism of Ghani Khan’s poetry. This is a society that produced
hundreds of anti-Taliban lashkar leaders all over Pakhtunkhwa who were
target killed because they insisted that Talibanisation is the
antithesis of 
