I recall receiving no small amount of hate mail over my insistence to let Pakistan’s new civilian government handle the tribal areas in the way it sees fit, and not at the behest of any short term Western concerns. Behold:
Pakistani forces have launched a military operation against Taliban militants near the northwestern city of Peshawar. The offensive in the Khyber tribal region marks the first major military action which Pakistan’s newly elected government has taken against the Taliban on its territory.
Pakistani forces reportedly bombarded suspected militant hideouts with mortar shells in the mountains in Khyber… “We are ready to negotiate with those who are ready to put down their weapons,” [Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani] said. “We are supporting a peace deal with those who want security in the region. We don’t oppose any peace negotiation with those people. We will use force against those who are causing insecurity.”
The crackdown follows increased activity of Taliban fighters in Khyber and in the sprawling city of Peshawar over the past year. Armed militants have threatened owners of music and video shops to close down, and ordered barbers to stop shaving men’s beards.
This sequence is important, and Gilani’s insistence on negotiations except as a last resort is crucial. It follows the traditional cycles of violence that have governed the tribal areas for a long while, and doesn’t break them with unexpected events, like “decapitation” strikes. In other words, it is reasserting traditional means of resolving center-periphery conflict—which has surely had more success than the U.S.’s ham-fisted meddling.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Pakistan is engaged in military action against militants around Peshawar right now. Do you see that as primarily a choice made by Gilani’s government, or is this current action something Gilani was forced to do by the West?
The military op was timed to coincide with Richard Boucher’s visit to Pakistan so it seems that meeting the short-term concerns of the US was a factor. As a result everyone is a little suspicious about the timing of the operation. I read in one of the Urdu dailies that some in Peshawar are accusing the government of pulling an Iraq war on the Pakistani people — i.e. making up a trumped up security threat (that Peshawar is on the verge of being taken over any minute) to serve as a pretext for occupation by the military. I don’t know how much truth there is to that, there was clearly an unacceptable situation going on around Peshawar, but it remains to be seen how this military op is going to improve it.
Behold:
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=15673