FEATURE-Pakistan army brings some relief from enduring nightmare
Thu May 14, 2009 2:46pm IST Email | Print | Share| Single Page[-] Text [+] By Simon Cameron-Moore
MARDAN, Pakistan, May 14 (Reuters) - Muhammad Azam Khan Hoti hasn't always been so certain, but he has few doubts left about the Pakistan army's determination to crush the Taliban and al Qaeda allies fighting in Swat valley.
"I'm damn sure they mean business this time," said the 63-year-old Pashtun patriarch from the northwest town of Mardan, as he drove between tented encampments set up for families who have fled the fighting north of the Malakand hills.
The offensive is entering its second week, and more than 700 militants have been killed, according to the military, while North West Frontier Province (NWFP) is reeling from the exodus of more than 700,000 people from the battle zone.
Pakistan's military is under pressure from the United States to act decisively against support in Pakistan for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban insurgency was confined to Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas on the border, Hoti used to think of it as an alien war, fought for the sake of the United States.
But the backwash of violence across NWFP over the past two years has convinced him otherwise.
"It is our own war. It is a war of survival, survival of this country -- Pakistan," said Hoti, an Awami National Party (ANP) grandee whose son is the chief minister of NWFP.
There are Taliban in Mardan, a bustling town on a fertile plain 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Islamabad.
They aren't as visible or as numerous as in the mountains of Swat, but there is real fear that some fighters will sneak in with the flood of people descending on the town.
At a checkpoint on the edge of Mardan, police looked for Taliban hiding among exhausted families crammed in cars, pick-up trucks and buses, and swept the vehicles with detectors in a cursory search for weapons and explosives.
"It's a nightmare," Hoti said as he steered his armour plated, bullet proof four-wheel drive vehicle through the town, protected by armed bodyguards in jeeps to the front and rear.
Like many leaders of the secular Pashtun nationalist ANP, Hoti is on a Taliban hit list.
"They fired three rockets at my house last summer, they went 20 metres over our heads," said Hoti, whose estate is protected by three perimeter walls, high metal gates and private security.
His front seat passenger had a far closer shave.
"You are travelling with two prime targets," Mardan police chief Akhtar Ali Shah told Reuters.
"I survived a suicide attack," said the police chief. Four police and five passers-by were killed in the Oct. 31 attack. The bomber's head landed in Shah's gateway as he sat in the car.
DOUBT AND SUSPICION
The Taliban and its allies had around 5,000 fighters in Swat, according to the military, and Hoti expects the army to squeeze the remnants north over the mountains into the thinly populated Kalam valley where they can be finished off more easily.
Whether there is a systematic follow through to destroy the Taliban elsewhere is an open question, though in March the army claimed victory after a 7-month campaign in Bajaur tribal region.
"I know the might of this army," said Hoti, who served as a captain in the Armoured Corps during the 1971 war with India and was a minister in both Nawaz Sharif governments in the 1990s.
"If they are determined to finish it they can."
Yet, there are perennial doubts over Pakistan's resolve.
An analysis published by the U.S.-based Strafor security consultancy on Wednesday said the army, after winning in Bajaur, reached "an implicit understanding that local Taliban will focus their efforts on Afghanistan instead of Pakistan".
Not all militants are regarded as enemies of the state, analysts say.
They believe some jihadi groups from the eastern province of Punjab and mujahideen factions in the tribal areas are still seen as assets that can be turned loose on Afghanistan or India.
Over the years some of the most feared jihadi movements opened offices in Swat, a halfway point in a militant transit route running between Indian Kashmir and eastern Afghanistan.
They included Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, two groups primarily focused on fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, as well as factions that sprang from Sipah-e-Sahaba, a Sunni Muslim movement that hates Shi'ites, according to police chief Shah.
They recruited locally, but sent fighters from the poor townships of central Punjab province for training in camps established in forested heights above Swat valley.
SEPARATING ASSETS FROM HOSTILES
Though his party's Pashtun nationalism is distrusted by the military, Hoti avoids criticising the army he once served as he describes how the Taliban insurgency came to his doorstep.
Pakistani generals believe foreign powers, including India, are stirring trouble in Pakistan's troubled northwest, and Hoti is sure some outside forces are providing arms and money.
He suspects an earlier military offensive in Swat in late 2007, early 2008, was inconclusive because Pakistani intelligence wanted time to separate assets from hostiles.
Now he and Shah reckon those groups have largely left Swat.
That left behind Pakistani Taliban, Central Asian fighters from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as well as al Qaeda cohorts, like Jammat-ul-Furqan, a step-child of the better known anti-India Jaish-e-Mohammad jihadi group.
When these militants moved in Buner valley from Swat last month, the army was finally ordered into action.
"Maybe we would not be sitting here if that decision had not been taken," said Hoti. (Editing by Sugita Katyal)
FEATURE-Pakistan army brings some relief from enduring nightmare | Reuters