WHY THE WANA AREA?
Much has been made of the fact that the Pakistani tribal areas are desolate, mountainous areas peopled by fierce warlords. But the reasons for al-Qa'ida and the Taliban hiding out there is much more complex than that.
In 1893, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of British India (which included Pakistan) completed a treaty with the Amir Abdul Rahman Khan of Afghanistan to establish what is known today as the "Durand Line" as being the official boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The surveying and mapping that produced that line, was based more on geography and British wishful thinking, than on problems of regional ethnicity. And therein lies the seeds of the current situation today.
To understand the crux of the problem, look at this Map of ethnic distribution in Afghanistan and Pakistan (opens in anew window, honest!) and note the distribution of the Pashtun peoples. Note, in particular that the Pashtun areas in Pakistan are in the narrow band along the western edge of Pakistan comprising the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). This was Pakistan's "apartheid", to isolate the Pashtuns and their language (Pashto) and fundamentalism from the rest of Pakistan.
The Pashtun people are Sunni fundamentalists, the same faith from which springs the Salafi and the Wahhabist sects that fire the philosophy of Osama bin Laden, al-Qa'ida and, most especially, the Taliban. It is not a surprise then, that the Pashtun people would become famous as the "brutal warriors of the Taliban". No artificial constraint, such as the political boundary between two countries, could restrain this Pashtun support for fundamentalist Islamic causes. Even if it meant harboring terrorists from foreign lands.
The current battle for the tribal areas that Pakistan (and the U.S.) are involved in, not only confronts al-Qa'ida, but also Pashtun fundamentalism. Pakistan has always governed the tribal areas under the principle that "if you don't cause us any problems, we won't cause you any problems". Of the seven tribal agencies within FATA, only North and South Waziristan continue to cause any problems. Pakistan has used the "iron fist and velvet glove" approach to pacify the other tribal areas, but in Waziristan, they are finding, they need more iron fist and less velvet glove.
This battle is winnable.
--Boot Hill
WHY THE WANA AREA?
The 1893 treaty that established the Durand Line as the official border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, was term limited to 100 years. That means that as of 1993 (11 years ago), the Durand Line ceased being the official border between these two countries. A provision in that treaty called for a re-negotiation of the exact boundaries of that border upon the expiration of the treaty. A Tripartite Commission has been formed to do just that.
"Coincidently", it was just one year shy of that treaty expiration date in 1992, that Pakistan installed the Taliban government to power in Afghanistan.
--Boot Hill