Pakistan at risk of losing hold on tribal areas
uploaded 25 Mar 2004Pakistan's autonomous tribal agency of South Waziristan has experienced outside meddling before. But as the six-day battle between the Pakistan army and suspected al-Qaeda militants showed signs yesterday of sparking unrest elsewhere, the lessons of earlier clashes will be preying on the minds of officials in Islamabad.
"This has the potential to become a major headache for Pakistan," said Samina Ahmed, Pakistan head of the International Crisis Group, which monitors conflict. "The danger is that the Pakistan army will inflame separatist tendencies."
In spite of decades of strong-arm military rule, Islamabad has always been reluctant to interfere with the delicate autonomy of its ethnic Pashtun minority. Spread across 26 tribal agencies along Pakistan's 2,400km border with Afghanistan, the tribal chiefs of the Pashtun areas jealously guard their autonomy.
Part of the deal is that Pakistani soldiers will only enter thesezones with local permission. The writ of Pakistan's legal system also stops at the tribal borders.
But Islamabad's reluctance to risk stirring the hornet's nest of Pashtun separatism was evidently trumped by the need to demonstrate it was taking tough action against the foreign terrorists who have allegedly been given shelter by some tribal chiefs.
The operation - against a "high-value" al-Qaeda target, protected by hundreds of foreign militants in a fortress compound - was launched last week as Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, was visiting the country. Mr Powell came with news that Washington would classify Pakistan as a "major non-Nato ally", which in theory gives it greater access to US defence equipment. Mr Powell also refrained from publicly criticising Pakistan's handling of the controversy over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist and so-called father of the "Islamic bomb", who was revealed to be at the heart of an international network of nuclear proliferators.
In return, General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, sent tens of thousands of troops into South Waziristan and bordering agencies. But with no sign of any senior al-Qaeda figures, many fear the manoeuvre is coming unstuck. "There is a strong feeling in the tribal agencies that Muslims are killing Muslims at the behest of the Americans," said a diplomat in Islamabad.
Pakistan officials had suggested that Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's Egyptian-born second-in-command, was in the compound. Now they are suggesting that he and other high-ranking al-Qaeda targets may have escaped.
Meanwhile, tribal resentment against the inevitable civilian casualties and internal displacement is triggering unrest in other agencies.
It is the links between Pashtuns in Pakistan and their cousins in Afghanistan that are causing most worry. Terrorist attacks by former Taliban fighters, many of whom were schooled at seminaries on the Pakistan side, pose a serious threat to Afghanistan's presidential elections, scheduled for June.
The former Taliban are also reinventing themselves as Pashtun nationalists on both sides of the border, say observers.
The Islamists said they were planning nationwide protests after Friday prayers tomorrow against what they see as Pakistan's capitulation to US pressure by launching the military operation in Waziristan.
Any sign that Pashtuns are uniting against Islamabad and forging closer ties with their Afghan counterparts will ring alarm bells in Islamabad.
Source: FT
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