PAKISTAN is currently witnessing two big battles, fought on two different battlefields. The outcomes of both will be crucial for the future of the country and its people, and will also have serious implications for the region and for India-Pakistan relations. One is being fought by the military against the Pakistani Taliban in its stronghold of South Waziristan. The other is in the political arena, where President Asif Ali Zardari is fighting for political survival against a broad array of opponents. The Pakistan Army is an important player in this battle, too, but as yet it operates only from the shadows.
Both battles, which were months in the making, began in October and marked a turning point yet another one for Pakistan in many ways.
The military had been reluctant to go into South Waziristan despite much pressure from the United States. Although the main stronghold of the Meshud tribes in South Waziristan the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) draws on the Mehsuds for its warriors does not share a border with Afghanistan, and the Pakistani Taliban does not send many fighters into Afghanistan, its links with Al Qaeda have been a major concern for the U.S.
Even after the killing of the TTPs leader Beithullah Mehsud in a U.S. drone attack in August, the Pakistan Army confounded military analysts by not taking advantage of the evident disarray and confusion in the militants ranks to launch an operation.
The long-awaited offensive began on October 17, when the Army was left with no choice but to take on the militants. From the beginning of October, the TTP had carried out a string of combo attacks, mixing suicide bombings and commando-style fidayeen tactics, the most serious of them being the one at the Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi on October 10. It followed this up with a synchronised triple attack in Lahore, targeting the Federal Investigation Authority and two police training schools.
The military was compelled to march into South Waziristan. Little is known of the operation as journalists are not allowed into the region. The Army and the Taliban have given differing accounts of the battle. On November 5, the Dawn newspaper reported that the Army was close to completing phase one of the offensive after seizing key places such as Sherwangi, Kotkai, Kaniguram and Sararogha and securing the main supply routes.
In just 20 days since the operation began, the newspaper reported, the Army was poised to enter Laddah, the Mehsud headquarters in South Waziristan. That, it said, would mark the end of the first phase of the offensive. If this is true, the military has gained much ground with more ease than was foreseen at the start of the operation.
The casualties so far for the military, according to numbers given out by the spokesman, were 40 soldiers killed and 71 wounded, while the militants appeared to have suffered far more losses. According to the militarys estimates, it had killed 500 Taliban fighters and left more than 700 wounded. The military says it managed to take all this territory by reversing the Talibans tactics on them: take the commanding heights and ridges around the strongholds and then move in to take over the strongholds. In earlier operations, the military had found itself trapped when the Taliban encircled and ambushed it from the heights.
Unlike in three previous operations in South Waziristan, the militarys reported success this time is also attributed to the higher number of troops deployed, and the use of attack aircraft and unmanned planes, which provided high-resolution images to the ground troops.
The hands-off stand adopted by the Ahmedzai Wazirs, the other big tribe in South Waziristan, is also said to have helped the military. The Wazirs control territory along the Afghan border in South Waziristan, and their decision to stay away helped control cross-border militant traffic during the operation.
Mullah Nazir, the leader of the Ahmedzai Wazirs, and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, an important Taliban leader, had joined hands with Beithullah Mehsud but the alliance came apart after Beithullahs killing. The two militant leaders were reportedly also encouraged by the military to distance themselves from the fighting. Some reports suggest that the military may have even entered into pacts with them to keep them away from the fighting.
The Taliban, however, contest the militarys reported successes. It has described its retreat from some areas as a tactical withdrawal and claimed that the military estimates of Taliban casualties are exaggerated. The militarys riposte is that tactical withdrawals do not involve abandonment of large quantities of arms and ammunition, as the Taliban has done in certain areas.
Whatever the truth of these claims, since the start of the offensive the Taliban have chosen to hit back more outside the battlefield, in the form of terror attacks across the country, perhaps in an attempt to create a national mood against the military operation and to put pressure on the Army to withdraw.
The Army and the government have accused India of being behind the terror attacks and of funding the Taliban, perhaps as a studied retaliation to repeated Indian calls to get the perpetrators of the November 26-29, 2008, attacks on Mumbai. This is a marked change from the earlier entreaties to New Delhi to come back to the peace process.
Increasingly, suicide bombers have singled out civilian targets an Islamic university in Islamabad, a bank in Rawalpindi. But it was the explosion at a marketplace in Peshawar that left the entire country devastated with its huge death toll of 105 people, many of them women and children. The blast overshadowed the arrival of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a visit aimed at neutralising the rising anti-Americanism and building bridges with ordinary Pakistanis.
While it is debatable if Hillary Clinton was able to achieve her aims through her many town hall-style meetings with sceptical students, civil society representatives and women and through her many interactions with belligerent journalists, what is clear is that the terror attacks have had the opposite effect of what the perpetrators may have had in mind. They have given rise to panic, but not yet of the kind that wants the military to stop its operation in South Waziristan.
Pakistan is also in the thick of a major political battle. President Asif Ali Zardari is fighting to survive in office but finds himself increasingly isolated even within his own Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The Army, despite its declared intention to stay away from politics, remains the single most important political force in the country and is also a major player in the ongoing power struggle.
If Zardari has in one year become as unpopular as Pervez Musharraf was after eight years in power, a large part of the blame lies at his door. He was never a popular leader and his elevation in public life following the assassination of his wife Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 was always seen as accidental. But where others would have trodden carefully Zardari brought his characteristic overconfidence into the role he inherited from his wife. His individualistic style of functioning and the concentration of the powers of both executive president and PPP head led to widespread resentment against him. Critics accuse him of setting up controversial buddies in key positions both in the government and in the party and running a crony regime that has failed to understand that the Pakistan of 2009 is not what it was in 1989.
But things might not have gone wrong for him had he not antagonised the Army. Pakistans most important stakeholder made it clear on several occasions that it was not on the same wavelength as Zardari, starting with the governments botched attempt to take over the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in July 2008. Zardaris declaration that Pakistan would agree to a no first use policy with India for its nuclear weapons was another thorn in the relationship, as were his statements putting Kashmir on the back burner and focussing instead on trade with India.
The nation welcomed the Armys put-down of Zardari in March this year over the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary. But it was with the Kerry-Lugar Bill in the U.S. Senate that the field was finally set against Zardari. When the military made public its displeasure with the conditions in the Kerry-Lugar legislation, which enabled the Barack Obama administration to give $1.5 billion annually for five years in non-military aid to Pakistan, it inaugurated an open season against Zardari. The media went hammer and tongs at the presidency for caving in to the humiliating and intrusive conditions, and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) raised a storm over it in the National Assembly.
According to unconfirmed reports, the Army may not have felt pushed to show such an open hand against the presidency had it not got scent of a conspiracy in the presidency to make important changes in the top brass. The truth of this may never be known, but this much is being discussed openly in the media: Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayanis tenure will end in October 2010 and Zardari is not inclined to give him an extension, although it is not clear if Kayani desires one.
Already bruised by the Kerry-Lugar controversy, Zardari suffered yet another setback when the government was forced to retreat on obtaining a parliamentary vote for the National Reconciliation Ordinance that Musharraf promulgated in October 2007. It was part of an agreement between him and Benazir Bhutto, designed to give her amnesty from corruption charges in return for her partys tacit support to Musharrafs 2007 election as President.
Later, the NRO also came to the aid of Zardari, getting him off the hook in several corruption cases and enabling his candidature for the presidency in September 2008. In July 2009, when the Supreme Court ruled Musharrafs November 2007 declaration of emergency unconstitutional in a landmark judgment, it also asked government to place in the National Assembly 37 ordinances introduced by Musharraf in the weeks preceding the imposition of emergency so that Parliament could decide their fate. For this, the court gave the government 120 days from July 31, the date of the judgment.
Legislating the NRO is viewed as crucial for Zardaris political survival. But with the mood intensely anti-Zardari and the Army making plain its differences with him, the government was on an extremely weak wicket as it put the ordinance through its committee-level paces in the National Assembly.
Nawaz Sharif, whose PML(N) was getting the tag of friendly opposition, came out strongly against the NRO, calling it a black law that would taint Parliament forever if it endorsed it. Even the governments own allies in the ruling coalition signalled that they would not support it in the National Assembly. The deadliest blow for the government came from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the Karachi-based party that is an ally of the PPP at the provincial and federal levels.
The MQM said it would not support the NRO in Parliament. Instead, Altaf Hussain, the London-based leader of the party, asked Zardari to make the biggest of the big sacrifices, which many observers interpreted as a call for his resignation. As the MQM is commonly viewed as a pro-establishment party, the call was said to have been inspired by other forces.
Shocked, the PPP, which does not have a simple majority on its own to have the ordinance passed, withdrew the NRO. Legal opinion is divided over whether the cases against Zardari will reopen automatically after the 120-day period. The NRO has separately been challenged in the Supreme Court as unconstitutional and discriminatory. Again, there is no conclusive legal opinion on what would happen to the cases against Zardari if the court were to rule against the NRO, if presidential immunity would provide him with a firewall against prosecution, or if it would trigger legal challenges to his very election as President.
As there is no constitutional way to remove the President except through the impossible method of impeachment, much of the political speculation over Zardaris free-fall is around three possible scenarios: observers see the pressure on him rising so much in the coming weeks that he will be compelled to resign on his own; or, he will be asked to do so, much in the behind-the-scenes manner that the Army forced him to restore the Chief Justice in March; or, at the very least, he will be forced to shed many of the powers of the presidency that Musharraf had added to the office by way of the 17th amendment to the Constitution.
Meanwhile, Zardaris opponents are making all efforts to pump up Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, exacerbating the tensions between the two. From the start, Gilani had made some attempts to be his own Prime Minister and not Zardaris dummy in Parliament and government. As a result, he also became the focal point for all those trying to cut Zardari to size. He has better relations with the Army chief than with Zardari. The PML(N) sees in him an opportunity.
At times, Gilani has appeared to have got carried away by the image others are building of him. But all said and done, he has not yet crossed Zardari in any bridge-burning fashion. And no politically savvy analyst believes that he has what it takes to rebel against the PPP leader and carry a significant portion of the party with him.
But as this battle rages, it would be good to remember the line a Pakistani journalist spun out at the time of the crisis over the Chief Justice: There are no rumours in Islamabad, only premature facts. That line is as apt now as it was then.st
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