Pakistan's War Within

As the war in Afghanistan intensifies, analysts predict a substantial increase in militant activity in Pakistan, likely leading to a war there on an even larger scale.

As the Obama Administration promises to bring the war in Iraq to an end, it says it will focus instead on the seven-year-old war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, an intense war has been taking place in Pakistan, often appreciably far from the border with Afghanistan. Beyond claiming the lives of thousands of Pakistanis, the confrontation has economically and politically destabilized the entire nation, and may force the US and its allies to rethink its current strategy in the so called War on Terror.

When the US entered Afghanistan in 2001, Pakistan's General-turned-President Pervez Musharraf supported the invasion, allegedly under threat of “being bombed back to the stone age.” As long-time friends of the Afghans, millions of whom had been living among them since the Soviet invasion in 1979, many Pakistanis questioned the decision that would turn Western Pakistan into supply routes, staging grounds, and eventually the front line in the war between the United States and the alleged perpetrators of attacks in September of 2001.

It did not take long for groups such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to attack Pakistan, which they saw as pivotal to the continuing occupation of Afghanistan by the West. Western Pakistan, divided into the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), has a population of about 20 million, about two million of whom are Afghan refugees. According to official Pakistani figures, 97% of FATA's inhabitants live in rural areas (only 7% of which are fertile) and only 17% of its population can read and write. A mix of lingering British Imperial law, negligence by Pakistan, and fierce independence among the local tribes ensures that the federal government has no legal jurisdiction over FATA, to the point that its movements are often restricted to a handful of major roads.

The Pakistani Army entered FATA in 2002 for the first time since the nation's independence, moving west and south into Waziristan in what is widely believed to be a result of pressure from the United States to clamp down on insurgents in the area. By 2004 South Waziristan was seeing heavy fighting between the Army and local fighters opposed to the federal incursions. The US began using unmanned aerial drones in the area to target high-level Al-Qaeda figures, often leaders the Pakistani Army was negotiating with. One such target, Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the group Tehrik-e-Taliban, had defeated the Army by 2006- and signed an agreement that would see federal forces withdraw from the area in exchange for an end to its use by foreign elements.  Soon the conflict spread north to Bajaur Agency, as the US stepped up drone attacks there as well. In one of many continuing retaliatory cycles, a strike that killed 80 religious students in October 2006 drew a suicide attack a week later that killed 42 Pakistani soldiers.

The war would intensify after the attack on the Red Mosque in the capital Islamabad, with attacks increasing ten-fold. More than a thousand students, many from the tribal areas, were holed up inside after beginning a campaign of harassment against alleged brothels, music shops, movie theaters and other establishments deemed to violate Islamic doctrine in the area. As reports of students kidnapping foreigners emerged, Gen Musharraf, claiming that many of those in the Red Mosque were armed and harboring Al Qaeda fighters, ordered the Army to attack. Casualty figures from the assault vary widely, with the government reporting 84 killed but other estimates ranging into the hundreds, many of them reportedly students from Waziristan sent there because their families could not financially support them.

In the NWFP's district of Swat, a popular resort for foreign trekkers, a group led by Maulana Fazlullah began a campaign to impose Sharia law. Although then unrelated to Al-Qaeda, it drew the attention of the federal government as it began blowing up girls' schools, music shops, and movie theaters. Known as the Radio Mullah for his use of pirate radio broadcasts. 

Fazlullah's campaign quickly took 59 towns, and became an excuse for Gen. Musharraf to impose de facto Martial Law in November 2007, setting aside the constitution and replacing the Supreme Court.  The order came shortly before the court was to rule on the legality of Musharraf's military and civilian roles, and an order that the hundreds of people detained since the Red Mosque siege be charged or released. Unprecedented backlash from civil society over the next few weeks forced Musharraf's resignation, and allow the return of two previous Prime Ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to the political scene.  Bhutto would soon be be killed along with 139 others in a suicide bombing which has been blamed on Baitullah Mehsud, who has denied any involvement.

Although last year witnessed a major uprising among local tribesman, who have organized militias, or lashkars, to fight the Taliban, 2008 went on record as the most violent in Pakistan's recent history, with almost three thousand deaths due to militant attacks, according to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, many of them in major cities far from Afghanistan. Militants in the FATA areas, particularly in Khyber and Waziristan, took over major supply routes and roads, carrying out a number of raids on supply convoys destined for Afghanistan. NATO troops there depend on the route to deliver about 80% of their supplies, and the militants have been exploiting this for several years, often easily cutting the routes for months at a time.

The Pakistan Army, which has about 80,000 troops deployed in the region, has claimed it has lost more than 1500 soldiers, but independent reports put the number at several thousand in the guerrilla war where the federal government struggles to clear and hold areas. Meanwhile drone attacks have become an almost daily occurrence, and the US is accused of at least one ground raid that left 20 dead in September of 2008. Pakistani officials continue to condemn the violation of the nation's sovereignty by the drones that according to locals, often kill civilians rather than Al Qaeda members.  There have been more than 50 drone attacks in 2008, killing several hundred people, drawing unanimous condemnation by Pakistan's national and provincial parliaments and the public outrage of its President and Prime Minister.

In recent months Pakistani forces have fired at US helicopters, and in what was called a “tragic incident” by then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, US forces on the Afghan side of the border killed 11 Pakistani soldiers in June of 2008. There is widespread speculation that senior Pakistani officials are privately permitting the attacks to continue. Publicly, most Pakistani lawmakers have joined their Afghan counterparts in calling for a political solution to the war, as a country with no little history of violent extremism watches suicide bombings quickly becoming the strategy of choice for those claiming to oppose the occupation.

The UN and International Red Cross estimate that nearly half a million people have been displaced by the war, and for the first time in recent memory, 20,000 have fled to Afghanistan for refuge. 170 schools have been bombed in Swat, and all 400 girls' school there are currently closed under threat from Maulana Fazlullah.

The economic outlook continues to worsen, as years of corruption and mismanagement under the Army take their toll. According to the Pakistani government, the nation needs $15 billion in the next two years to avoid bankruptcy. After even long-time allies such as China and Saudi Arabia refused to give Pakistan enough assistance, it reluctantly took a $7.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in late 2008. The Army claims it has spent some $35 billion in its war since 2002. Despite some gains, heavy fighting continues in the NWFP and FATA, particularly in Swat, Bajaur, and Waziristan, where US drone attacks continue to complicate the situation for locals attempting to suppress the Taliban.

As the war in Afghanistan intensifies, analysts predict a substantial increase in militant activity in Pakistan, likely leading to a war there on an even larger scale. With every person killed, it becomes more difficult for tribal leaders to make a case for peace, and the war threatens to further destabilize a country already on the edge of failure. The fate of Pakistan, as many of its leaders continue to point out, lies in the future of a stable Afghanistan. As long as enough people there feel they are under occupation, they will continue to fight western forces, along with anyone that supports them, including their own countrymen in Pakistan.