Pakistani forces battle militants in tribal region

Warplanes first strike area near Afghanistan’s border

Pakistani Taliban patrol in their stronghold of Shawal in the Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan in this file photo from Aug. 5, 2012.
Pakistani Taliban patrol in their stronghold of Shawal in the Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan in this file photo from Aug. 5, 2012.

ISLAMABAD -- The Pakistani army Sunday began an operation against foreign and local militants in a tribal region near the Afghan border, hours after jets pounded insurgent hideouts in the country's northwest, the army said.

The move ends the government's policy of trying to negotiate with Pakistani Taliban militants instead of using force to end the years of fighting that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and security forces. It comes a week after the militants laid siege to the country's largest airport in an attack that shocked the country.

The North Waziristan tribal area, where the operation is targeted, is one of the last areas in the tribal regions where the military has not launched a large operation. Militant groups including the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaida and the Haqqani network have used the region as a base from which to attack both Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan.

"Using North Waziristan as a base, these terrorists had waged a war against the state of Pakistan," military spokesman Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa said in a news release announcing the operation.

As Islamic militants capture cities in Iraq and the U.S. draws up plans to withdraw from Afghanistan, public opinion in Pakistan is shifting in favor of stronger action against fighters who were previously seen locally as more of a threat to America's interests. The Taliban want to impose their version of Islamic Shariah law in Pakistan, which includes a ban on music and stricter rules for women.

"At stake is the future of Pakistan," said Mahmud Ali Durrani, a former national security chief and ex-ambassador to the U.S. "Do we want a Talibanized Pakistan, or do we want to live according to the constitution, democracy? If we want to live according to our constitution and democracy then we have to fight for it, because they are the kind of people who don't believe in these things."

The U.S. has pushed Pakistan to clear out militants in North Waziristan because they often use it as a sanctuary from which to attack NATO and Afghan troops. But Pakistan has said its troops were already too spread out across the northwest.

On Sunday night, the defense minister aggressively supported the operation, but there were no comments from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

"Now we have to fight this do-or-die war," Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told Pakistan's Dunya Television. "We will fight it till the end."

There was no information on how many troops were involved. The military said troops had been deployed along the borders to prevent militants from escaping, and within North Waziristan troops had cordoned off areas including the largest cities of Mir Ali and Miranshah.

Refugee camps have been established, the local population is being told to approach designated areas so they can be evacuated, and surrender points have been established at which militants can give up their weapons, the military said.

A week ago, 10 militants died when they attacked the Karachi airport, killing 26 others. The airport attack, against a transportation hub vital to the country's economy, shocked Pakistanis and marked a turning point.

Pakistan has been criticized for fighting some militants such as the Pakistani Taliban, which attack the state, but maintaining links with other militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban or the Haqqani network, which the country believes help it maintain influence in Afghanistan.

A key question surrounding this operation will be whether it targets all the fighters equally, said Ayesha Siddiqa, author of Military Inc. about the Pakistani military. She also said that just focusing on North Waziristan ignores the wider problem of militants in the rest of the country.

"This is going halfway and not the full way," she said.

Pakistan already has a sizable military presence in North Waziristan, an estimated 28,000 to 30,000 troops, said defense analyst Zahid Hussain, whose book The Scorpion's Tale plots the rise of militancy in Pakistan.

Hussain said militants had been using North Waziristan essentially as a training base. This operation will establish the military's control across the territory and make it more difficult for militants to freely operate there. But, he warned, it won't be easy, and it likely will spark reprisals.

"It is going to be a long, drawn-out war," he said.

Even before the announcement, Pakistani jets early Sunday pounded insurgent hideouts in North Waziristan, targeting militants who carried out the Karachi airport siege, officials said. The military said 105 militants were killed in the strikes.

"There were confirmed reports of presence of foreign and local terrorists in these hideouts who were linked in planning the Karachi airport attack," the military said.

One of those killed was Abu Abdul Rehman al-Maani, believed to have helped orchestrate the airport siege, two intelligence officials said. They did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The area where the strikes occurred is remote and dangerous for journalists, making it difficult to independently verify the accounts.

Residents in North Waziristan said they were woken up after midnight to the sound of jets roaring overhead.

"All the family members gathered in the yard in fear," said one local resident, Tawab Khan, from the village of Boyapul, about 5 miles from where the airstrikes hit. "We could hear big bangs, but they didn't come from very close to our area."

Already tens of thousands of residents of North Waziristan have fled the region because of earlier military airstrikes and out of fear of more. News of the operation will likely increase the exodus.

North Waziristan resident Nur Rehman recently fled in anticipation of a military offensive. The threat made life unbearable, and about a quarter of the people in his village of Tappi have left, he said Thursday from the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, where he was staying with his wife and three children.

"In the sky, you have drones, and on the ground there's no safety," Rehman said. "You don't know when you'll become a target."

The military said most of the dead in the Sunday strikes were Uzbeks. Uzbek militants have long based themselves in Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, along with the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the airport attack in what was a rare instance of the group striking within Pakistan. The militant group was formed in 1991 to overthrow the Uzbek government and install an Islamic caliphate there but later expanded that goal to include all of Central Asia. The organization has attacked U.S. and NATO targets in Afghanistan.

Information for this article was contributed by Rebecca Santana, Asif Shahzad, Riaz Khan and Zarar Khan of The Associated Press and by Augustine Anthony and Kamran Haider of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 06/16/2014

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