Pakistan gets tribes to fight its battles in new strategy
PAKISTAN: President Pervez Musharraf has found unlikely new
allies in pro-Taliban tribesmen who are driving foreign Al-Qaeda
militants from Pakistan’s tribal belt for the first time, officials say.
Local sources say the government has covertly armed and helped
Pakistani tribesmen during battles this week against Uzbek insurgents in
mountainous South Waziristan. At least 114 people have died.
Pakistan denies supporting them but openly approves of their actions,
especially when the United States, Musharraf’s key backer, is pressuring
him to crush alleged Al-Qaeda sanctuaries along the Afghan border.
“Local tribesmen are fed up and these moves show they want their
areas clear from foreigners who were creating all sorts of problems,”
Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told AFP.
“It is the success of the policy the government pursued in the region
for the betterment of tribal people.”
A government source in Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, went
further, saying the fighting “is an offshoot of Pakistan’s newly adopted
strategy to drive Al-Qaeda-linked foreigners out of the region”.
Devout Muslim tribesmen in South Waziristan sheltered hundreds of
mainly Arab and Uzbek Al-Qaeda extremists who fled Afghanistan after
US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in 2001 for failing to hand over
Osama bin Laden.
Pakistani forces launched military operations there in 2004 to expel
the foreigners, but since the government signed a peace deal with rebels
in 2005, US officials say new Al-Qaeda facilities have sprung up.
Tensions have however arisen between the locals and Uzbek militant
chief Tahir Yuldashev, head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and
once a close confidant of bin Laden. He was injured by the army in 2004.
The chief spokesman for the Pakistani military, which has lost more
than 700 soldiers in anti-Al-Qaeda operations, said it was “not
interfering” in the clashes.
“But it is a positive sign that the tribesmen have decided to fight
these foreign militants and their backers, who were a source of trouble
there,” spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told AFP.
Islamabad Thursday, AFP |
