ANALYSIS: Pakistan improves position to fight terrorists

ANALYSIS:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan | Despite continuing suicide attacks in Pakistani cities, Pakistani forces poised to attack the Taliban and al Qaeda in a key tribal redoubt along the Afghanistan border have a better chance of success than in the past because of months of successful CIA drone attacks and growing opposition to the militants among tribal groups.

Islamic extremists on Monday again showed their ability to infiltrate Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, where a suicide bomber attacked the headquarters of the U.N. World Food Program, killing five local employees. Such tactics, however, have increasingly alienated Pakistanis including in the tribal area along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

On Saturday, Turkistan Bhittani, a tribal leader who has broken ties with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the main Pakistani Taliban group, said U.S. drone attacks are “absolutely correct” and that he hopes for a successful military offensive despite the presence of “10,000 foreign militants” in the opposition camp.

Mr. Bhittani, who made his comments to the BBC Pashto language service, was referring to the area in South Waziristan controlled by the Mehsud tribe of Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader who was killed recently in a suspected U.S. drone strike.

Mr. Bhittani’s public support for unmanned aerial strikes was a first for any major Pakistani militant commander.

The TTP alliance is responsible for the recent offensive in the Swat Valley region that came within 60 miles of Islamabad and for attacks throughout Pakistan, such as Monday’s bombing and the December 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Such divisions among tribes and subtribes throughout the border regions of Pakistan are likely to become more significant as Pakistani security forces take on the TTP.

“There could not be a more conducive time to target TTP and al Qaeda for the security forces,” said Gul Rahman, a researcher at Gomal University in Dera Ismail Khan city, just outside the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan.

“Because already a large number of people, whose number [is] running into hundreds of thousands, have left South Waziristan due to fear of fighting. But more importantly, many of these people whom I came across told that they greatly appreciate the drone strikes and offensive against Taliban and al Qaeda. So a kind of anti-militant public opinion has formed in South Waziristan, which should be capitalized upon.”

A senior official in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, of which South Waziristan is a part, told The Washington Times that an operation would be launched in the coming weeks in the rugged terrain along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

“All the preparations for the military offensive against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the foreign militants based in South Waziristan have been made. It is up to the military command when to launch the operation, but indications are it would be done soon,” said the senior official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he is not authorized to talk to the press.

Successes by Pakistan on its side of the border figure prominently in the U.S. debate over troop levels needed in Afghanistan.

“We hope that will lead to a campaign against all insurgents on that side of the border, and if that happens, that’s a strategic shift that will spill over into Afghanistan,” retired Gen. James L. Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser, said in a television interview Sunday.

Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, visited Waziristan on Wednesday and spent time with field commanders and troops deployed there.

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