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Actually, the Taliban has turned to guerrilla warfare and is prolonging the battle. Moreover, they have scattered into other tribal areas in Pakistan’s rugged northwest.
Under U.S. pressure and in response to numerous suicide bombings the military, backed by Pakistan’s spy agency the Inter-Services Intelligence, had launched a major ground offensive on Oct. 17 against the Taliban and other Islamist rebels in the country’s northwest. Haunted by previous not-so-successful operations against the Taliban, the military elite finally decided to begin a real duel against its former ally.
The rugged topography of the region, former abject failures, and the fear of losing its stooge against its childhood enemy, India, no doubt had caused hesitation and uneasiness in the minds of the Pakistani military. But U.S. President Barack Obama’s outcry against terror and the suicide bombings finally propelled the army to act.
A glance at a map of the region shows that the Kurram and North Waziristan areas separate the Orakzai territory from South Waziristan. Logically speaking, the militants should have regrouped there by directly crossing through the other two provinces. Or they could have taken a circuitous route to reach Orakzai via the North West Frontier Province and Punjab. The second scenario is an even more dangerous situation for the greater Pakistani landmass.
When the ground offensive commenced it was said that South Waziristan was the epicenter of Taliban operations. Now the military has shifted its attention to Orakzai and incidents of violence have also been reported from other areas like Khyber and Kurram.
The fact is that the Taliban is a wily contender and has enhanced its fluidity. It is distributing its militants all over Pakistan and the military shall consequently find it hard to achieve success in this battle.
This time around the Pakistani army has a stronger conviction to uproot the Taliban menace, but the enemy is not a baby. At the same time Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership is not excluding the option of holding talks with the insurgents. After all, they would prefer not to alienate their erstwhile ally, more so in the event of a possible U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Compounding these problems is the presence of the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Muhammad Omar at Quetta, capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. This haven provides a constant supply line to the Taliban in the northwestern regions, both in terms of logistics and ideology.
There are reports that senior U.S. officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond the tribal areas and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in Quetta. Interestingly, after much dillydallying, Pakistani officials confirmed the existence of the alleged Quetta-Shura Taliban network. Moreover, they have also admitted that the United States is using the Shamsi airbase, about 320 kilometers (200 miles) southwest of Quetta, for predator-drone strikes on the Taliban.
Top Taliban leaders including Hakeemullah Mehsud and Qari Hussain are still at large. So where has the military achieved anything substantial in South Waziristan? Its offensive has also not thwarted suicide attacks in urban areas, although the military claims otherwise.
Meanwhile Pakistan’s civil administration keeps shifting the blame for suicide bomb attacks onto India, which means that real success against the Taliban and other militants is hard to come by.
There are reports of Taliban elements sneaking into India to commit many terror attacks similar to the Mumbai attacks last November. Is this the extended arm of the Taliban-al-Qaida duo acting on its own, or has the ISI reactivated its machinery?
Meanwhile the biggest bank robbery in the history of Pakistan took place in Karachi on Dec. 13. Could this also be Taliban related? Working out a correlation may not be such a formidable exercise.
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(Uddipan Mukherjee has a doctorate in physics from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. He writes on international relations and security issues pertaining to India. He blogs at: http://uddipanmukherjee.blogspot.com. ©Copyright Uddipan Mukherjee.)
