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Pakistan’s army, expanding its six- month-old offensive against Taliban guerrillas, says it has seized much of a second tribal district following its takeover of South Waziristan.
About 7,000 troops have taken parts of Orakzai, a district of forested mountains where Taliban regrouped after their ouster from Waziristan. With the fighting in Orakzai, the army has fought major operations in six of the seven tribal districts, called agencies, along the Afghan border.
“Operations are ongoing in South Waziristan, Khyber and Orakzai,” army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said in an interview. “But in all regions where we get information about militants, the military will take action.”
Pakistan has resisted U.S. pressure to extend its offensive into the seventh, North Waziristan Agency, from where the Afghan guerrilla faction led by Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani stage attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan says it wants to consolidate its current offensives before opening new fronts.
While retired U.S. counter-terrorism officials accuse the Pakistani armed forces of protecting the Haqqani faction, which it backed in Afghan wars of the 1980s and 1990s, the expanded offensive underscores Pakistan’s commitment to battling militants, Abbas said.
Soldiers ordered into Orakzai on March 22 have taken Lower Orakzai, in the southwestern part of the agency, Abbas said. About 350 militants have been killed there, the army says.
Another Year
Independent reports from the semi-autonomous tribal agencies are rare, and the army’s account from Orakzai could not be directly confirmed because government restrictions and lack of security keep journalists out of the tribal zone.
Abbas did not say how long the Orakzai offensive may last. Overall, “the operation in the tribal areas will take at least a year,” said Mahmood Shah, a security specialist and retired army brigadier in Peshawar, the northwest’s biggest city, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the Orakzai fighting.
“Once the Orakzai operation ends, which will be soon, the military will start an offensive in North Waziristan,” Shah said. The Haqqani faction, which operates around the North Waziristan town of Miramshah, has claimed some of the highest- profile attacks in Afghanistan, such as the July 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed more than 60 people.
Expanding offensives in northwestern Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, have helped curb Taliban attacks on Pakistan’s cities, 80 percent of which the government says were planned in South Waziristan. There have been four major terrorist assaults on big cities this year compared with 24 incidents in 2009, according to Bloomberg data.
Deficit Grows
The government’s expansion of the war may widen the fiscal deficit to as much as 5.5 percent of gross domestic product in the year ending June 30, against a target of 4.9 percent, according to Asad Farid, an economist at AKD Securities in Karachi.
The military has escalated efforts to clear guerrillas from the Khyber Agency, which borders Orakzai to the north and straddles a highway through the Khyber Pass that is a main supply route for U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
At least 55 civilians were killed when a fighter jet targeted militants on April 10 in Khyber, according to Tariq Hayat Khan, secretary for law and order in the tribal areas.
“Militants had started fleeing to Tirah Valley in Khyber due to its linkages with other tribal areas and Afghanistan,” the military said in a statement on April 11. “Tirah has become a hub of militants including foreign fighters.”
Refugees Flee
Pakistan’s army sent 28,000 troops into South Waziristan in October after wresting the northwestern Swat Valley, once a popular tourist destination, back from Taliban control in an offensive that started in May.
More than 3,000 Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks last year, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies in Islamabad.
As many as 204,000 refugees have fled Orakzai and are registered in the northwestern towns of Kohat and Hangu, according to Khalid Khan, a senior local official in Kohat.
“We heard the deafening sounds of jet bombing, artillery shelling and gunship helicopters,” said Jamal Khan, who left Orakzai this month for Hangu. “We saw a group of 20 Taliban fleeing their hideouts and dead bodies of Uzbek militants.”
Mullah Toofan and Mullah Rafeeq, two prominent Taliban commanders, are natives of Orakzai. Hakimullah Mehsud, the Taliban commander thought by the Pakistani government to have been killed in an attack by a U.S. drone aircraft in January, was the chief military commander for Orakzai, Kurram and Khyber agencies when his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, ran the Pakistani Taliban.
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