Waziristan next, says Zardari

LONDON: Pakistan is to extend its war on the Taliban beyond Swat into the fiercely independent tribal areas bordering Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership are believed to be hiding.

‘We’re going to go into Waziristan, all these regions, with army operations,’ President Asif Ali Zardari told The Sunday Times in an interview. ‘Swat is just the start. It’s a larger war to fight.’

He said Pakistan would need billions of pounds in military assistance and aid for up to 1.7 million refugees, the biggest movement of people since the country’s split from India in 1947.

To help take on the militants, the Pakistan army is for the first time to accept counter-insurgency training from British and American troops on its own soil.

‘We need to develop our capability and we need much more support,’ said Mr Zardari. ‘We need much, much more than the $1 billion (military aid) we’ve been getting, which is nothing. We’ve got 150,000 troops in (the tribal areas) — just the movement of that number would cost $1 billion.’

The army is planning to open new fronts in Waziristan and Darra Adamkhel. Waziristan is the headquarters of the militant Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, led by Baitullah Mehsud, who has been named as the mastermind behind the assassination of the former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Mr Zardari appealed for $1 billion in aid for refugees. ‘If we are to win the hearts and minds of these people we need to be able to relocate them back into civil society, rebuild their houses and give them interest-free loans to restart their businesses,’ he said.

‘If we don’t they will turn against the government and we will lose the impetus we’ve managed to create in the country against the Taliban.’

The Taliban were said to be holding out in Sultanwas, a mountainous valley in Buner. All access to Swat, where the army said a house-to-house search was under way for Taliban leaders in Mingora, was banned.

Mr Zardari insisted that the army was committed to defeating the Taliban. ‘I think the casualties speak for that, the displacement speaks for that,’ he said.

He claimed that officers sympathetic to the militants had been purged. ‘I’m confident the army perceives the Taliban as much of a national threat as we do.’

He added: ‘You cannot fight this war only on the battle (field). You also have to fight it on the economic front — you have to offer something to the youth.’