THE OMENS FROM SOUTH WAZIRISTAN
by B. Raman
Following persistent and widespread speculation in the
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally-Administered Tribal
Areas (FATA) of Pakistan about a bloody clash between US and Pakistani
forces near the border of Afghanistan with the FATA, reports from
Washington DC have quoted the Pentagon as having confirmed that a
clash, but of a minor nature, did take place on December 29, 2002, near
the Afghan village of Sikhin in which two Pakistanis were killed and
an American was injured. During the clash, an American F-16 dropped a bomb
hitting a madrasa (Muslim religious school) in the South Waziristan area
of the FATA in Pakistani territory.
2. From the welter of reports on the incident coming
from the NWFP and the FATA, it has been possible to reconstruct the
following: Unidentified elements, suspected to be from Al Qaeda or the
Taliban or both, opened fire on a US patrol near the Pakistan border in
the Paktika province of Afghanistan last week. In the ensuing
exchange of fire, the US patrol killed one Said Muhammad, a resident of
Wana, headquarters of the South Waziristan Agency.
Hundreds of people shouting anti-US and anti-Musharraf slogans, including
some Islamic fundamentalist members of the newly-elected NWFP Legislative
Assembly, attended his funeral at Wana.On December 29, 2002, (some reports
say it was actually on December 30) another US patrol in the Afghan
territory adjoining the FATA came under fire from some elements in
Pakistani territory. The firing stopped after a while. The head of the US
patrol asked the head of a Pakistani para-military unit called the
Waziristan Scouts, which consists largely of Pashtun tribals recruited in
the area many of whom are related to the members of the Taliban and which
is responsible for security in the affected area, to trace those who
had fired on the US patrol and hand them over to the US patrol for interrogation. The
head of the Pakistani unit denied any knowledge of the identity of those
responsible or their whereabouts. The Waziristan Scouts allege that
thereupon the US patrol tried to enter Pakistani territory to search for
the assailants. The South Waziristan Scouts resisted this by opening fire
on the US patrol. There was a heavy exchange of fire during which the
South Waziristan Scouts claim to have killed at least seven Americans, but
fatal American casualties have not been admitted by the US authorities.
Thwarted in its attempts to arrest the assailants, the US patrol
called for an air strike. US helicopter gunships dropped three bombs
on a double-storey madrassa-cum-mosque complex at a place called Angoor
Adda run by by Maulana Muhammad Hassan, of the Taliban,
who is alleged to be related to Said Muhammad. Only two
of the bombs struck the madrassa severely damaging it, while the third
fell in an empty plot of ground nearby. According to the South
Waziristan Scouts, there was nobody in the madrassa complex and hence the
US bombing was uncalled for.
3. A statement on the incident issued by the US Army
headquarters at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan said that an American
soldier was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a Pakistani border
patrol, prompting the US to drop a bomb on the border area. it
claimed that the American was part of a unit conducting a routine mission
with Pakistani forces along the Afghan border when a disagreement appeared
to break out. It added: "A Pakistani border scout opened fire with a
G3 rifle after the US patrol asked him to return to the Pakistan side of
the border. That individual and several others retreated to a nearby
structure. Close air support was requested and one 500-lb bomb was dropped
on the target area. We are working with the Pakistanis for an
accurate battlefield damage assessment from the incident."
4. According to another version given by Maj.
Stephen Clutter, an Afghanistan-based spokesman of the US Army, the
incident occurred on December 29, 2002, near the Afghan town of Sikhin
along the border with Pakistan. A US F-16 fighter attacked a building
after a man who injured a US soldier ran inside it. According to him,
American and Pakistani troops were working together at the time to blow up
a cache of munitions, when the shooter was told to leave the area.
Instead, he crouched and began firing. Maj. Clutter said the attacker
might have been impersonating a Pakistani border guard. "I can't
speculate what was in his mind." However, Pakistani officials have
admitted that the attacker belonged to the South Waziristan Scouts.Maj.
Clutter added: "Pakistan has been a loyal ally and I'm sure they're
just as concerned about (this incident) as we are, if in fact he (the
attacker) was a member of their force."
5. Captain Alaine Cramer, another US Army spokesperson,
claimed that the bomb had landed within Afghan territory, about
300 metres from a Pakistani border post.Maj.Gen.Rashid Quereshi, the
Islamabad-based spokesman of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military
dictator, also claimed that the US plane attacked a target in Afghan and
not Pakistani territory.
6.The incident has caused considerable anger against the
US and Musharraf in the Pashtun tribal belt. On January 1, 2002, the
NWFP Legislative Assembly where anti-US and pro-bin Laden and pro-Taliban
members of the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the six-party fundamentalist
coalition, are in a majority, passed unanimously a resolution condemning
the alleged US bombing of a madrasa-cum-mosque in Pakistani
territory.The Jamaat-e-Islami also has condemned it.
7. Before the elections on October 10, 2002, Musharraf,
in his anxiety to break Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in
the NWFP, caused a split in the PPP and withdrew the cases under the
anti-terrorism act and other laws against many Islamic fundamentalist
elements in the province to enable them to contest the elections. The
result: The Islamic fundamentalist elements, many of them relatives of the
Taliban leaders and cadres, managed to win a majority and are now in power
in this area which is vital for the US war against the Taliban and Al
Qaeda. It has been reported that since the Cabinet of the fundamentalist
parties was sworn in, many members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who had
taken shelter in Karachi, have drifted back to the NWFP and taken shelter
in the madrasas there.
8. The FATA is directly administered by Islamabad and
the fundamentalist Government now in power in Peshawar does not have
control over the administration there, but there too the fundamentalist
parties have a strong presence. The Waziristan area has seen intense
searches by the Pakistani security forces, assisted by experts from the
USA's National Security Agency (NSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), since the beginning of last year since many of the fleeing Al Qaeda,
Taliban, Chechen and Uzbeck terrorists had taken shelter there.
While the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements dispersed to other parts of
Pakistan, including Karachi, the Chechen and the Uzbeck elements, many of
them married to Pashtun women, have stayed put there, merged in the local
population and have been harassing the US forces on the Afghan side of the
border. They have recently been joined by the Pashtun members of
Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
