[R-G] Taliban Taunt Musharraf by Detaining His Soldiers

[Anthony Fenton]

PAKISTAN:  Taliban Taunt Musharraf by Detaining His Soldiers
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39112

PESHAWAR, Sep 1 (IPS) - The seriousness of the challenge to Pakistan  
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s authority in the remote tribal  
areas bordering Afghanistan was apparent this week when the Taliban  
captured 180 soldiers in two separate incidents.

On Thursday, the Taliban audaciously abducted more than 150 soldiers  
in the volatile South Waziristan Agency in the Federally Administered  
Tribal Areas (FATAs). And on Friday another 30 soldiers who were  
members of a convoy, were taken prisoner, a local journalist from  
Wana, South Waziristan, told IPS.

"You don’t see any law enforcer in FATA, especially after sunset. The  
militants hold the real authority," said Zulfiqar Ali, who reports  
from the area and knows it well. He speculated that the fact that the  
militants could seize and hold such a large number of soldiers  
indicated their size and strength and said it was possible that the  
government had already lost control of the tribal areas.

Speaking wih IPS Qazi Hussain Ahmad, chief of the fundamentalist,  
Jamaat-i-Islami, told IPS that while Musharraf needed political  
support to win in elections mandated early next year, his close  
alliance with the United States and his role in the ‘war on terror’  
in Afghanistan had made him vulnerable, both politically and militarily.

"Following his moral defeat over the reinstatement of the chief  
justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and the army raid on  
the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) Musharraf’s war against the extremists in  
North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the adjacent tribal areas may  
well prove to be the last nail in his coffin," said Ashraf Ali, a  
researcher at the University of Peshawar.

An uneasy truce between the authorities and Islamist fighters in the  
border areas was called off on Jul. 10 after the army stormed the Lal  
Masjid that had been taken over by pro-Taliban groups. Islamist  
fighters had launched a series of revenge attacks, including suicide  
bombings, on military targets in FATA and NWFP.

On Aug.9 militants abducted 16 security personnel from Bannu. Three  
days later, they beheaded one of the hostages and released a video- 
tape of the barbaric killing that was carried out by a child fighter,  
in a blatant show of disregard for human rights laws that prohibit  
the enlisting of child soldiers.

"Release of the horrible video footage of the abducted soldiers is  
meant to compel law enforcers to stay away from their fight with  
Musharraf," said Dr Said Alam Mahsud, an intellectual based in South  
Waziristan.

At the start of the U.S.-led war on terrorism in early 2002 Musharraf  
enjoyed support in the FATA. But this faded fast because of heavy  
casualties suffered by the local population in aerial attacks  
launched by the U.S. army from across the border in Afghanistan, and  
backed by the Pakistan army, said Rakhshanda Naz, resident director  
of the Aurat Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

She said that frightened locals have turned against the army since  
the attacks had targeted innocent women and children. U.S. forces  
claim that the Taliban, following their ouster from power in Kabul  
late 2001, had found shelter among pro-Taliban groups in the FATA and  
NWFP.

Islamist forces first flexed their muscle against Musharraf last  
November when they bombed a Pakistani army camp in Dargai, an NWFP  
town, killing 42 recruits.

That attack in October 2006 was a tit-for-tat response to the U.S.  
air strikes on a seminary in Damadola, Bajaur tribal agency, which  
left 80 students dead. In an earlier aerial attack on Bajaur, in  
January 2006, 18 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed  
triggering nation-wide protests and public anger.

"Such attacks tend to produce thousands of jihadists. Musharraf is a  
friend of the U.S. and so the enemy of the tribal population,"  
Maulana Faqir Muhammad, a close associate of al-Qaeda second-in- 
command Dr. Aiman Al Zawahiri told IPS from an undisclosed location  
in Bajaur.

"It is a violation of human rights that the government kills innocent  
people," observed Kamran Arif, vice president of the independent  
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). "It is only natural that  
people will react in FATA and NWFP. Musharraf himself has survived  
two (assassination) attacks. About 300 soldiers have been killed  
since the Red Mosque operation," he added.

The bloody end to the siege of the mosque, whose leaders had openly  
sympathised with the al-Qaeda, was a turning point for Musharraf.  
Weeks later, Pakistan’s sacked chief justice Chaudhary, who had  
crisscrossed the country campaigning against his unfair ouster, was  
reinstated. On Aug. 23, Pakistan’s top court ruled that former prime  
minister Nawaz Sharif was free to return from exile in Saudi Arabia.

Sharif has said he will return on Sep. 10, but he stands to be  
arrested on arrival. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in several  
cases, including tax evasion and treason after the 1999 coup that saw  
Musharraf take over power.

The situation in the border areas seems to be tilting against  
Musharraf. "The endless string of suicide bombings on the army,  
policemen and pro-Musharraf politicians is a clear indication that he  
is losing control," Parveen Begum of the NGO AWAZ told IPS. She says  
that the reported beheadings of alleged U.S. spies by militants is  
part of the anti-Musharraf campaign.

"Even the political administrators of North and South Waziristan  
agencies are camped in Peshawar because of the lawlessness there,"  
said Mian Iftikhar Hussain of the nationalist Awami National Party.  
He said the bombings of army and police convoys and the attacks on  
video shops and barbers’ shops were a sure sign of control slipping  
from Musharraf’s hands.

(END/2007)