Pakistan Begins New Hunt for al-Qaida

WANA, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani troops and paramilitary forces using artillery and helicopter gunships launched a new assault Thursday against al-Qaida and Taliban suspects in a tribal region near Afghanistan, two days after a fierce assault that left dozens dead.

The new push began in Azam Warsak, Shin Warsak and Kaloosha villages in South Waziristan, the tribal region that borders Afghanistan, said Brig. Mahmood Shah, the chief of security for the area. Army spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan said there have been casualties in the new offensive, but he had no details of how many or on which side.

The operation follows a clash between security forces and suspected Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts in a fortress-like compound in the village of Kaloosha, just miles from the border. Some 39 people - including 15 troops and 26 militants, died in the raid on Tuesday, the military said Thursday in a statement. Eighteen other suspects were captured.

The statement said most of those killed Tuesday were foreigners, but it gave no details of nationalities and acknowledged that only two of the bodies had been recovered. No senior al-Qaida figures are believed to have been among those killed or captured.

One of the two dead militants whose bodies were recovered was a Chechen and the other was believed to be of Middle Eastern origin, a military official said on condition of anonymity.

In another part of the tribal region - North Waziristan - attackers launched a rocket and fired gunshots at a Pakistan army post before dawn on Thursday, Sultan said. Two soldiers died and several were injured in the attack, according to an intelligence official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The official also said that assailants threw a hand grenade at an army truck heading to Miran Shah, the main town of North Waziristan,and that several soldiers were injured. But Sultan denied the incident occurred.

The fresh operation in South Waziristan began as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell began talks with Pakistani leaders in the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday. Powell was meeting with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism. They were expected to discuss the operation in Kaloosha, as well as U.S. efforts to track al-Qaida and Taliban holdouts on the Afghan side of the border.

The aim of the operation is to ``flush out foreign terrorists from Pakistani territory,'' Shah told The Associated Press from the northwestern city of Peshawar, a regional capital where he is based.

Early morning calls from mosques warned residents in Azam Warsak, Shin Warsak and Kaloosha to leave the area, apparently to give the troops more room to operate.

About a dozen helicopters buzzed over Wana, in South Waziristan, early Thursday, flying toward the operation zone about 6 miles to the west.

A convoy of army trucks carrying soldiers also passed Wana hours before it started. Later, when the operation began, mortar booms could be heard in the town, from the direction of the battle zone.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdur Rauf Chaudhry said extra troops were dispatched in anticipation of the new offensive.

He said ``a few'' paramilitary troops are missing since the operation in Kaloosha on Tuesday, with rumors in the region that they may have been kidnapped by the suspected militants.

The raid in Kaloosha on Tuesday sparked outrage in the tribal region, which fiercely covets its autonomy and has resisted foreign intervention for centuries.

After the battle, attackers set fire to several military vehicles, some containing weapons and munitions.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan announced over the weekend the start of an operation - dubbed Mountain Storm - to capture terror fugitives, including Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

On Monday, Musharraf promised to rid Pakistan's tribal areas of foreign terrorists. Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal regions border eastern and southern Afghanistan - the focus of operation Mountain Storm.

From Jang:

Pak troops launch Wana operation with reinforcement
(Updated at 1200 PST)
WANA: The operation in Wana has been launched again on early Thursday morning for the arrest of the wanted people in the area.

Secretary FATA Brigadier Memhmood Shah informed Geo that the Wana operation started by Frontier Corps and Militia has been re-launched on Thursday with the help from Army and gunship helicopters. He however declined to give any specific number of the troops participating in the operation.

He said that the operation has been re-launched, with reinforcement, to arrest the militants who were in a large number than expected and as such they could not be nabbed in the previous operation. He said that the operation will continue unless these elements were combed out of Pakistan. He said that the local population was given three hours for evacuation from the area following which the operation was launched at around 10 am in the morning.

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/

Dawn article. Some word about the pickup truck from the other day.

Reinforcement sent to Wana for decisive action

PESHAWAR, March 17: The government has ordered regular troops and paramilitary forces to move immediately to the South Waziristan tribal region as suspected militants fired rockets into a scouts fort, officials said.

They said orders had been given to Pakistan Army and the paramilitary Frontier Corps to immediately dispatch more troops into South Waziristan to reinforce the single army brigade stationed at Zari Noor and the over 4,000 militia force.

The officials would not give the exact number of troops to be moved to the troubled region for security and operational reasons, but said the reinforcement would help take decisive action against foreign militants and locals harbouring them.

Orders had also been issued to move helicopters and heavy pieces of artillery and other armoury to the region in a bid to launch a series of operations.

"Orders have been given for the troops to move. If it takes them fifteen hours to move they will not take fifteen hours and one minute. We are going to resume operations to flush out these militants and take the whole campaign to its logical end," the official said.

"Our operations will resume and it will be tackled with whatever it takes," said this official. "Plans have been worked out and we are going to move shortly".

Knowledgeable sources said future operations would be carried out by a combination of regular and paramilitary troops. The paramilitary would still spearhead the operations because of their knowledge of the area and local customs but the army, which had hitherto been on standby, would now provide cover.

Hundreds of people, including women and children, were seen leaving the scene of the Tuesday's bloodiest clashes in Kaloosha, 15km west of the regional headquarters Wana, and adjoining areas.

"People are fleeing the area using whatever they can get, tractors and trucks, fearing a retaliatory action from the government," a resident reached on phone in Wana said. "The situation is very tense," said.

Officials in the Fata secretariat on Wednesday said the fighting had left 15 Frontier Corps militiamen dead and 22 injured. This raises the overall death figure to 16, including one army soldier who was killed when attacked on the way to the scene of the battle. Five army soldiers were wounded.

The government claimed on Tuesday that 24 suspected militants had been also killed and among them 19 were foreigners. However, only two bodies have been retrieved.

"They don't leave their dead behind if they can help it and it appears that they took along bodies of their comrades while evacuating the area," said a security official.

Charred military vehicles, including 13 trucks, three pick- ups, three armoured personnel carriers and four pieces of light artillery, littered the scene of the battle.

There was still no word about 19 missing paramilitary soldiers and two tehsildars. Security officials said that six of those missing appeared to have died and the rest had been taken hostage by the militants.

"There is a deadlock on that issue. We suspect that six of those missing might have been killed but their bodies have not been found. We have no idea as to what has happened to them," said the official.

He said the authorities in the region had refused to negotiate with militants for a possible swap. "There will be no negotiations with the militants. Authorities in the region have spurned any offer for negotiations," two senior officials confirmed to Dawn.

Reliable sources had informed this paper that militants had approached the authorities in Wana to seek release of their comrades in arms being held in return for the paramilitary soldiers held hostage.

Officials said that a pick-up truck that had broken through the paramilitary cordon amid hails of bullets was later found abandoned after it had hit a wall. "Whoever there was in the vehicle has been wounded," said one official.

But a security official told Dawn the pick-up truck was the one that had remained in the use of Nek Muhammad, one of the five key suspects accused of harbouring and sheltering foreign militants.

The officials said that foreign militants fired rockets into Mehsud area on Tuesday night after local tribesmen refused to let them pass through their territory and move into the Shawal Mountains.

They said that militants riding in pick-up trucks had sought to pass through the Mehsud area in Tiarzai tehsil but were turned back by armed tribesmen holding positions.

The rockets did not cause any damage except one, which fell on a house of a local resident, identified as Wazir Jan. Some rockets fell near a school and a fort occupied by the Scouts but did not cause any damage.

http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en57819&F_catID=15&f_type=source&last=&back=&next=&day=0

No senior al-Qaida figures are believed to have been among those killed or captured.

The fresh operation in South Waziristan began as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell began talks with Pakistani leaders in the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday

U.S. forces in Afghanistan announced over the weekend the start of ..operation - Mountain Storm - to capture terror fugitives, including Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

The concept of hospitality is very different in such areas than it is here. If a stranger presenting no threat to you or yours presents himself, you are obligated to grant him hospitality; food, drink and shelter from the elements. And when hospitality has been offered and accepted, you are obliged to defend your guest from others as if he was your own family, even if he is a criminal. So when OBL shows up, the tribes protected him. We initially failed to understand this, thinking that anyone OBL was found with were automatically co-conspirators. Certainly, some were. But others were simply following ancient custom (older than Islam) and saw no reason why they should cooperate with Westerners against someone with whom they shared at least some cultural ties. But eventually we've learned how this system worked.

Hospitality has it's limits. You are not required to offer it forever; you can ask a guest to move on. If someone is a notorious criminal, it is possible to refuse to offer hospitality. Hosptiality can be requested, but not demanded. Now that the tribes find that the central Pakistani government is serious, they are starting to refuse hospitality. Also, I suspect that OBL is running out of people to ask it from. He's probably abused the system. And there are probably also those who figure that OBL's more trouble than he's worth, and after all, he IS a foreigner.

This leaves him only his hard-core supporters to work with. My guess there is that they're simply starting to decrease.

AFP story with some additional details:

Pakistan army unleashes new Al-Qaeda offensive

WANA, Pakistan : Hundreds of soldiers backed by helicopter gunships stormed homes in Pakistan's rugged tribal zones in a new offensive against Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters two days after a similar operation left 39 people dead.

Army and paramilitary troops raided homes in the villages of Kalushah and Azam Warzak in South Waziristan tribal zone, close to the Afghan border, where hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban are believed to be hiding, military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said Thursday.

Sultan called the assault, which came as US Secretary of State Colin Powell held talks with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a "major operation."

Residents were told to evacuate by broadcasts over mosque loudspeakers just three hours before the raids began at 10:00 am, local official Shafiquz Zaman said, adding there had been an exchange of heavy fire.

"There are foreign militants hiding in the area and they are the ones who are putting up resistance. They are our target," he said.

An AFP reporter saw at least 15 helicopters flying in the vicinity and heard several explosions.

Retired Brigadier Mahmood Shah, head of security for the tribal region, said the "full-fledged operation" was a resumption of the assault launched Tuesday, when the forces were under-prepared for the heavy resistance they encountered.

Fifteen soldiers and at least 24 militants were killed Tuesday after paramilitary troops surrounded a residential compound in Kalushah, around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the Afghan border.

"In Tuesday's operation we underestimated their number and strength. We have therefore launched a new offensive," he told AFP.

"They are resisting. Both sides are firing with heavy and light weapons."

"We gave them a chance, offered them amnesty but they were bent upon killing Muslim people. The foreign militants have no justification for killing people."

Another 13 soldiers and two local administration officials have been missing since Tuesday's clash.

"I don't know whether they are made hostages or not but they are missing," Shah said.

Hundreds of families had already fled the region since Tuesday over fears of a new military operation, witnesses said.

Some 40 kilometers north in North Waziristan, suspected militants attacked an army camp with grenades and machineguns, killing a major and another soldier, officials said.

"I can confirm that a major and a soldier has been martyred in the attack on the army camp," Sultan told AFP.

The latest operations, matched by similar offensives by US and Afghan troops over the border, follow indications by Powell that he would be telling Musharraf to toughen operations along the frontier to stamp out the militants.

In the Afghan border province of Paktika, which faces South Waziristan, an Afghan commander said Wednesday that more than 100 US soldiers backed by 900 Afghan troops were preparing for a "major offensive" against insurgents.

"The US troops and Afghan troops have come here to take part in the major operation which was announced by the Americans," said Zakim Khan.

US-led troops are in the throes of a new offensive launched March 7 across southeast Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda leaders, dubbed Operation "Mountain Storm."

Speaking to CNN after landing in Islamabad Thursday night Powell acknowledged Musharraf's anti-terror efforts in the face of political and security risks.

"He's been a good friend as we participate in the war against terrorists, and he has a terrorist threat here in Pakistan," he said.

- AFP

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/76096/1/.html

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