Taliban pride falls in the feet of Pakistan Army:

Before Pakistan Army flushed out the TTP terrorists from Sararogha by November 3, 2009, it had served as headquarter of the terrorist outfit Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the South Waziristan region. TTP had a firm grip on the area and used it as its training, logistical, planning and execution facility even after the death of its founder, Baitullah Mehsud, in a drone attack on August 5. Pakistan Army, in a spectacular action against the terrorists moved in a three pronged strategy and destroyed a larger part of all that had been helping Taliban to keep operating from the area. The scattered stones and debris in and around Sararogha, as many media personnel reported after visiting the area, hints at heavy fighting between the militants and Pakistan Army in which Army managed to killed nearly 300 Taliban terrorists and the troops finally took the town including a strategic hill near the small town called Point 1345. The fight for this point was fierce and bloody with terrorists suffering heavy casualties and were finally pushed out of the important town. ‘It all started from here, the challenge to the state of Pakistan,’ Brig. Muhammed Shafiq, the operations commander, told media during a recent visit. ‘Sararogha had turned into a symbol of the TTP terror in the region but Pakistan Army has snatched it from terrorists– teeth,’ he proudly said.

TTP comprises of criminals, crooks and killers:

A look-back into the events ´ based on interviews with people displaced through the fighting and latest operation as well as with journalists from the region ´ also explains that through a swift but systematic campaign, the militants, then led by Baitullah and now by successor Hakimullah Mehsud, pushed out the entire local civilian administration, eliminated suspected government ‘collaborators’ and practically declared this town as the headquarters of their state. When TTP seized this town in a surprise attack on a paramilitary fort on January 25 last year, they instantly executed half of the two dozen Frontier Corps soldiers. Some of them were publicly slaughtered and this filled the hearts of roughly 8000 inhabitants with fear and forced them into a deadly submissive silence. TTP also ‘held court’ in the Sararogha High School building and pronounced public punishments on opponents and dissidents. The Taliban-Qazi used to summon the local population, at times, to actually and publicly watch the execution and punishments that included from lashing to beheadings or firing squads. Over 800 tribal elders/leaders and government officials have been killed during Taliban and Al-qaeda witch-hunt for collaborators since 2004. Public execution and beheading of ‘spies’ had reached alarming levels particularly in North and South Waziristan since early 2008.

A journalist (whose name cannot be mentioned here because of his security concerns), threatened by TTP and now living quietly in Peshawar, also corroborated some of the horror tales narrated by army and government officials.

Taliban licking their wounds:

Officials claimed having killed over 550 militants in the current campaign so far, with close to 100 casualties to the security forces. Since access is extremely limited to the area and the army had choked all the arteries leading into the Mehsud region ´ dubbed as the terror den by many army officials before the launch of the operation ´ confirmation of the military claims is not possible. Also, almost the entire population has moved out ´ leaving the military to handle the militants who have ‘retreated as a tact and will continue attacking the security forces,’ TTP new spokesperson, Azam Tariq said. But many observers mocked his statement: ‘did they have any other option but to run?’ Spokesman of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas stated that taking the areas back from the militants was crucial to signal to ‘all and sundry that we would not tolerate any challenge to the state.’ You cannot allow a bunch of criminals to bully a State, he added.

How Pakistan lost control of South Waziristan:

Regardless of the exact numbers of the captured and killed militants, or those who fled, the most important consequence of the latest offensive so far, is that the army has wrested control of the areas. Army and other institutions of the State lost control of these areas mainly because of two reasons:

1. The general elections in February last year, followed by a long-drawn squabbling between a politically tainted President Asif Zardari and his arch rival Nawaz Sharif, a two-time prime minister, resulted in unusual uncertainty, inaction and confusion as far as the war against militants was concerned.
2. Matters also came to a halt in the context of Nov.26 terror attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai. Following the civilian government ‘soft-peddling ‘ vis-à-vis the Indian offensive accompanying allegations that Pakistani intelligence were part of the plot, the mistrust between the civilian government, already alleged to be too pro American, and the Pakistani military establishment, led by General Ashfaq Kiyani, grew to the extent that action against militants in Waziristan also got delayed, allowing the Taliban and al Qaeda to perpetrate a reign of terror that almost completely eroded the writ of the government and also projected itself in the Pakistani cities through an ever growing number of suicide attacks on civilians and the security apparatus.

Waziristan was hub of terrorists:

Taliban recent defeat, and Army kicking them out of Sararogha, provides a small but strong indication of the convergence of Taliban and Al-qaeda could be detected by the dozens of military warfare magazines, books and teachers– manuals on explosive preparation as sizeable material seized was in Arabic language. This discover, left behind by the retreating militants at the seminaries in Sararogha as well as Laddah, suggest the close cooperation in combat preparation along with merger of both the terrorist outfits.

Osama ideology of terror attracted Muslims across the sectarian divide:

Several hand-written notebooks also explain how al Qaeda ideology binds followers of various shades of Islam together; one diary ´ that belongs to one Shehzad Akmal, details the journey of this man of the Sunni Deobandi strand of Islam from Karachi, the Pakistani metropolis on the Arabian Sea in the south, to the tiny mountainous town of Sararogha in South Waziristan. This journey, as per the hand-written notes, took Shehzad to Kashmir, where Kashmiri militants had been fighting Indian forces since 1989, as well as to Lahore, where he twice attended the grand congregation of peaceful Muslim preachers some time in 2004. This all happened between March 2002, when he apparently left Karachi, and some time this year, when he ostensibly was either killed or forced to flee the area.

Another diary appears to belong to a Tehreekul Mujahideen (TM) fighter, who details the evolution of this anti-India outfit with dates and venues. The TM happens to be a Wahabist organization and draws its ideological inspiration from the Saudi Arabian version of Salafi Islam. But the fact that the two ‘writers’ belong to different shades of Islam, and mention several Arab names as their contacts, indicates that the Osama bin Laden Al-qaeda succeeded in galvanizing Muslims from various sects across the globe. His mission to destroy the America, and the West, convinced Muslims to put their ideological differences behind to join Al-qaeda. This trove of materials ´ that also explain the configurations of suicide jackets and improvised explosive devices ´ underscores how these al Qaeda techniques of insurgency have traveled from Saudi Arabia through Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Army successful operation Rah-e-Nijat:

There are speculations that these criminal elements guised themselves as Islamist forces and drew influence and material from external sources. Pakistan Army has succeeded flushing them out of their strongholds which had become no-go areas for any of the State agency or organization. Pakistan Army should plan to stay in and retain control of the area from mid-to-long term to maintain the status quo. Army successful operation has certainly changed the dynamic of the militancy in the tribal areas and the Pakistani State has finally proven that it can effectively break an unholy alliance of local and foreign criminals, crooks and killers. Unlike many other unfinished operations in the past, the Pakistani military and political leadership is giving a message with one voice: no matter what it takes and for how long, no challenge to the writ of the State will be tolerated.

As of now, the remote and deserted towns and villages seem in control but the real challenge lies in retaining and consolidating that control. Government and military needs to create an environment that would allow the return of the civilian machinery and encourage tens of thousands Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to return to their homes in the area.