Pakistani humanitarian disaster to trigger chaos

The Pakistani military’s unchecked “war on terror” in the country’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan could risk alienating tribes that might very well respond by upsetting the stability of an already volatile region.

By Naveed Ahmad for ISN Security Watch (24/09/2004)

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?id=108033&lng=en


Predictably, last week’s meeting between US President George Bush and Pakistani ruler General Pervez Musharraf covered various aspects of the “war on terror”, with Washington vowing to enhance economic ties with its frontline ally and offering renewed assurances of its support for Islamabad’s anti-terrorism efforts. The two administrations are pinning high hopes on the progress of a joint working group on terrorism and law enforcement. US Secretary of State Colin Powell praised General Musharraf for “doing quite a lot in the western part of the country and in the tribal areas along the border”. And clearly, there is no doubt that Pakistan’s armed forces are pursuing an expensive military operation in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan - operations that only seem to be intensifying as US presidential elections near. For about one year now, the Pakistani military has been engaged in operations in the country’s backward and remote tribal areas, particularly the South Waziristan Agency (SWA). But other than military reports as to the success of the operations and the number of “terrorists” killed or arrested, no one really knows what is happening there, with access to the region having been completely cut off by the government.

Information blockage

Since the area has been completely sealed off to commercial or humanitarian activities - and barred to journalists or any other non-military personnel - little reliable information is available, and the media is forced to simply take the government’s word that the “war on terror” is having no negative affects on the rest of the population. Neither the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) nor any other local or international humanitarian groups have set foot in the region since the military launched its anti-terrorist sweep. Any non-resident of the tribal areas, which were created in the early 20th century as a buffer zone between the British Empire and Afghanistan, needs written permission from the government to enter the region. There are a handful of tribal journalists who have gained partial access to the SWA, but they have not been permitted to wander around or visit any of the sites where the military claimed to have destroyed an al-Qaida hideout. Local media are full of rumors about events in South Waziristan, but none of the stories have been confirmed. The latest of the widely circulated rumors said that terrorists in the Wana region had surrounded over 100 soldiers, and even that some Indians have been killed in the area. The military’s spokesman, Major-General Shaukat Sultan, categorically denied both rumors. As a gesture of goodwill, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz announced that the government would lift the ban imposed on commercial activity in the Wana sub division, as talks continue between militants and political authorities. In practical terms, lifting the ban is only for foreign media consumption and could have lasting impact only after the military action is called off, and a political process towards peaceful settlement is given a chance.

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>The tribal maze

Spread over 6’619 square kilometers, the South Waziristan Agency is the largest and poorest of Pakistan’s seven tribal agencies, which were the brainchild of British colonizers. The agency consists of three sub-divisions: Ladha, Sarokai, and Wana, the latter serving as the capital and the center of the military’s operations. According to census documents and tribal elders, the Mehsud tribe largely inhabits the former two sub-divisions, while the Wazir, Dotana, and Sulaimankhel tribes inhabit Wana. The Wazir tribe is further divided into nine sub-tribes, of which the Zalikhel tribe is the largest. The Yargulkhel tribe is a clan of the Zalikhel tribe, and has been a thorn in the government’s side, showing firm resistance to law-enforcement agencies during the security sweeps. They live mostly in Kaloosha, Azam Warsak, and Daja Ghundai, some 10km from the capital. There are only two main roads, the Wana-Azam Warsak Road, which is about 20km long and was constructed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Wana-Wakhwa road, which was built with US aid in the 1990s. The Wazir tribe possesses inherited lands in Afghanistan’s Paktika, Shakeen, Bermal, Zabal, and Kandahar provinces, as well as property in Pakistan’s Dera Ismail Khan district.

Fleeing the wreckage

Various sources suggest that by June 2004, over 30’000 local tribesmen had crossed into Afghanistan to seek refuge from the Pakistani military, while over the past few weeks, another 20’000 have fled to Pakistan’s financial capital and southern-most port city, Karachi. Karachi houses the largest concentration of ethnic Pashtuns, who control the transportation business and provide a source of hard labor. Bus drivers in the area told ISN Security Watch that at least 500 tribal people have been arriving in Karachi every day for the past 10-12 days. Some Karachi-based Urdu-language newspapers have also published interviews with and photographs of families reaching the city after having lost everything in the tribal areas. Even the tribal elders and the local journalists could not put a figure on the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) moving to nearby peaceful districts, such as Tank and Dera Ismail Khan. As the operation began last year, hundreds of families began to flee the area, but still many more had nowhere to go and have been forced to live in what many say is now the wreckage of South Waziristan. Local journalists claim that soldiers have occupied every second vacated home close to the Wana-Azam Warsak Road, thus denying civilians the right to use the only two single-lane roads. The local tribesmen now have to pay a fare of Rs 350 (about US$6) while taking a detour using an alternate road when it is sporadically opened to the public, compared to the peacetime cost of only Rs 10 (about US$0.17). And it can take up to five hours to reach a destination that is usually only 10 minutes away. Similarly, due to short supply of food items in the region, the price of 80 kilograms of wheat flour has shot up to Rs 2’500 (US$41.5) from Rs 1’050 (US$17.5).

Operation enigmatic

Skyrocketing costs and vacated homes aside, witnesses say they have never seen or heard of any “well-known” or “high-value” terrorists being arrested or killed in South Waziristan, and analysts have widely linked the military operation in Wana to the US elections - suggesting that Pakistan is providing the US administration with evidence that something productive is being done towards winning the “war on terror”. For the first time in the country’s history, fighter aircraft are being used to bombard the region. ISN Security Watch learned that the Pakistani Air Force had initially resisted the army’s demand for assistance, but eventually caved in. “The Air Force has resisted the participation in the military operation as much as it could, but then we agreed with the assurance of the provision of exact locations of target,” a senior officer said on condition of anonymity. He told ISN Security Watch that the Pakistani people were proud of their air force and that “we would not like to be seen like the Israeli Air Force, bombarding innocent people”. Now the Pakistani Air Force’s F-7Ps are assisting the army’s US-made gunship helicopters in providing close air support for the army’s ground operations. Military officials claim to have killed 150 terrorists and arrested 150 more in the tribal region, but many insiders believe that the operation against alleged al-Qaida suspects has achieved nothing but death, destruction, and the displacement of innocent people and their property.

Sandwiched between the army and al-Qaida

The number of individual “terrorist” deaths and arrests reported by state-run television and announced by various military officials is far higher than the overall number publicly acknowledged by the army’s own spokesperson, Major-General Sultan. And questions remainabout the number and identities of those killed and arrested. “There are uncounted deaths of innocent people women, children, and the elderly, who failed to quit the area in time,” said Ansar Abbasi, an investigative journalist who heads the Islamabad Bureau of The News daily. “The human rights organizations don’t talk about such killings for fear of annoying their donors, and thus losing their support,” he remarked. While the government reports some 150 “terrorist” deaths, the independent media have challenged both the death toll and the identities of those actually killed. And there have been other undeniable instances of serious collateral damage, including the destruction of dozens of orchards and tube wells. The karez system of irrigation, introduced under British rule, is yet another casualty of the frequent bombardment and shelling. Conservative estimates of injuries sustained by non-combatants are said to be in the hundreds, while medical services are scarce. Wana District Hospital and Wana Tehsil Hospital, the two main medical facilities available, have only recently been reopened. There is one more hospital owned by a tribesman offering very basic services. In various interviews, Mehsud tribesmen told ISN Security Watch and other newspapers that the inhabitants of Azam Warsak, Kalosha, Dabkot, Daja Ghuandai, Ghawakha, Shah Alam, Kangikhel, Ziarhi Noor, and Wana had passed through a doomsday during an eleven-day military operation in which they witnessed heavy fighting between two powerful forces, the Pakistani Army and al-Qaida operatives. The local residents were either trapped in their mud houses or asked to vacate their houses prior to the operation. In any case, they have suffered tremendously. "We had become sandwiched between the two mighty forces and were just praying for an immediate end to the operation," Umer Khayam Wazir, a university graduate who fled the area, said, adding that army’s heavy shelling had pounded the Shewkai Narai mountains for some 48 hours without letting up. The heavy shelling has claimed dozens of innocent lives. In one incident alone, some 12 people, including six children and five women, died and 13 others were injured when an army gunship fired on a convoy of cars rushing civilians out of Wana.

An unchecked ‘killing spree’

Despite losing 12 family members and two cars, 40-year-old Sher Ali does not blame the army. He is like many other tribesmen who believe that "the soldiers do what they are ordered to do”. His family members, including six children, five women, and his brother were all killed in the military sweep. Federal Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao has promised that the government would pay compensation to the families of civilians who have fallen victim to the “war on terror” in Wana. However, nothing has actually been done to that end. The minister told ISN Security Watch: “Any civilian who might suffer injuries in the operation would also be compensated.” He justified the operations, saying that they were being conducted in only those areas of Wana where there were reports of the presence of “foreign elements”. Opposition parties in Pakistan have criticized the government for carrying out “a killing spree at the hands of the armed forces without ever verifying the real identity and role of those tipped off as terrorists by the Americans”. Pakistan’s influential religious-political leadership argues that the foreigners living in South Waziristan have given up their calls for a “jihad”, or religious war, since the early 1990s, and are now living peacefully in the region with their families and other locals. Ershad Mahmud, a well-known academic specializing in the dynamics of India and Pakistan’s Kashmir conflict, told ISN Security Watch: “The use of force against individuals or groups cannot be justified by merely terming them as terrorists. There has to be a clear-cut definition and means to validate the claims made against someone suspected of such crimes.” He believes that the “war on terror” is aimed at reversing any gains made to limit the armed conflict through the application of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention.

Fueling the fires of Pashtun resistance

Since the start of the operation about a year ago, schools have remained closed in the troubled, backward South Waziristan region. Moreover, the military demolished some 80 mud-houses that allegedly belonged to suspect militants. The Wana bazaar has been affected the worst due to sanctions imposed by the government. Business in the market, which houses 5’500 shops, has come to a record low, though once around Rs 50 million (about US$833’000) worth of goods - wheat flour, sugar, ghee, and electronics devices smuggled from Afghanistan - made for a bustling bazaar. The untold misery of the local people - widely regarded as “terrorists” by the foreign media, and as miscreants by the Pakistani army - fuels the emotions of the angry, proud, and energetic youth, “who are left with no option but to resist the ‘occupation’ of their land”, Wazir, the SWA university graduate, told ISN Security Watch. The government is trying to overcome that phenomenon by resorting to political options, such as engaging tribesmen in talks and offering amnesties - but so far with little notable success. Thus, the high spirits of jihad, money, terror, and above all the harsh attitude of the political administration, are becoming more embedded among the Pushtun people, who make up over 22 per cent of the country’s population. The implications of Pakistan’s unchecked war against terror could be disastrous, not only for General Musharraf, but also for the country’s territorial integrity.

Operational politics

Malik Muhammad Anwar, a Zalikhel elder, told ISN Security Watch via telephone last week: “The most irritating thing is the lack of respect for the political process, which was never allowed to reach a logical conclusion”. He cited at least six occasions when the army began operations on the same day that a Jirga (traditional tribal council) was to meet. On Saturday, the prime minister invited the region’s religious-political alliance to talks. A veteran senator of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) party, Professor Khurshid Ahmad, said the talks amounted to little more than “lip service”, saying that the government should take the parliament into confidence and discuss the issues with the legitimate democratic forces in the country. “They would not discuss it there even at the opposition’s insistence, but instead make repeated public statements to meet and discuss outside the parliament.” Khurshid doubted the government’s sincerity to resolve the most pressing issue of the day. Frequent exchanges of views with senior government officials, even ministers and high-ranking military officers, suggest that there is a very small minority that is privy to the military’s real game-plan and exit strategy, if at all one exists, from the “war on terror” in the SWA. Various newspapers have published unconfirmed reports that more than six Pakistani army officers had been detained during an intelligence investigation, but later released. Those officers have remained silent about their detention, but others who had been detained earlier have told media that their families were being harassed to keep to silent. Various politicians, including Islamists, moderates, and even Pakistani nationalists, have repeatedly pointed out that the image of country’s armed forces has been considerably tarnished. “There is no dearth of advice from a variety of quarters saying the same thing: ‘Don’t trust the US too much and act against your own people on its behest. They would repeat what they did after the Soviet disintegration: Leave you out in the cold,’” warned Sardar Auaz Sadiq, an opposition parliamentarian from the Pakistan Muslim League.

A dangerous game of alienation

The government and wanted tribal militants accused of harboring suspected “foreign terrorists” have reached an accord under which the most wanted tribesmen would surrender to the authorities on Wednesday. It is worth emphasizing here that none of the names on the list are actually foreign militants - but only local tribesmen accused of “harboring” them. Interestingly, the accord, being kept secret, is likely to be made public during the governor’s visit to Wana after the Wednesday deadline. Similar accords reached earlier between the two parties have fallen apart, with each side interpreting them to its own advantage. The “wanted” list reportedly includes Ba Khan - the influential Ahmadzai Wazir tribal leader who fled to the Afghan capital of Kabul after the military destroyed 200 shops belonging to his family in Wana. Khan is reportedly seeking political asylum from Afghan transitional president Hamid Karzai. As such, Pakistan’s “war on terror” seems to be increasingly risking the alienation of those people living near the Afghan border - people who, like the Wazirs and the Mahsuds, have traditionally viewed Afghanistan as their true home. For General Musharraf and Hamid Karzai, Ba Khan and many influential tribal elders like him are vital for the security situation along the volatile Afghan-Pakistan border areas. The increasing sense of alienation and betrayal among tribesmen may deal a serious blow to the country’s internal security and its overall territorial integrity.

Naveed Ahmad is ISN Security Watch’s correspondent in Islamabad. He is an investigative reporter for The News and the Karachi-based monthly Newsline. He is a visiting lecturer on conflict resolution at Iqra University. He was awarded the Hawaii-based East-West Center’s Jefferson Fellowship in fall 2000, as well as the Washington Press Center’s “Conflict Resolution and Nuclear Non-proliferation” fellowship.