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Endgame closing in on Baitullah

Baitullah Mehsud has had his opponent Qari Zainuddin murdered in Dera Ismail Khan for disclosing facts about him that he had denied. If this is a measure of how Baitullah will react to his diminishing hold over his objectors, then he is sure to kill another local rival Turkistan Bitani who had made public his criminal activities last week. Does this mean that Baitullah is gaining the upper hand in the region where the Pakistan Army is now challenging him with an operation? The fact to keep in mind is that Zainuddin and Bitani were encouraged to speak out because of the hope revived in them by the military operation. That Baitullah has had to kill Zainuddin instead of ignoring him as in the past points to his growing insecurity.

Pakistan has been opposed to the American drone attacks on its territory, but not without some evidence that the local population living under the heel of Baitullah Mehsud did not mind them. There was a time when the drones did not target Baitullah simply because he was not attacking American troops across the Durand Line. This was a tactic of keeping down the number of people operating in Afghanistan through the “incentive” of “non-strikes”. Now that pattern is changing and the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is feeling the heat of missiles coming from the drones. On Tuesday, these missiles killed at least 51 Taliban in South Waziristan, where the army is poised for an attack on Baitullah’s stronghold.

South Waziristan under attack is going to expose a whole lot of people hiding there and operating in neighbouring countries. The estimates about the strength of the people Baitullah has under arms keep changing; so do the estimates about the funds he has at his disposal. He is now said to have approximately 20,000 militants. There was a time when people thought he could mobilise 50,000. Only the “foreigners” he was protecting were supposed to be 5,000. To the number of Uzbeks, Arabs, Chechens and Uighurs have been added a number of Tajiks who are fighting against the Uzbek-dominated regime of Tajikistan. Uzbekistan has suffered a number of attacks guided from South Waziristan by Qari Tahir Yuldashev of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Baitullah has also allegedly used IMU men to kill the innocent people of Swat.

Before the decision to mount a military operation against him, Baitullah enjoyed the kind of grudging recognition that tyrants enjoy when they are unchallenged. The mere fact that the army has decided to go for him has changed that point of view. The greatest weakness suffered by him is the loss of support from the people of Pakistan who now consider him a threat to the state and to Islam itself. Not only have his opponents come out of their hiding to speak out against him, his suicide-bombers are being caught “before the fact” in all the vulnerable cities of Pakistan because of the slackening of the will to die for someone who is no longer a model for them.

Perhaps it was a wrong strategy to mop up his lieutenants on the margins and leave him alone at the centre to gradually suffer a waning of his power. Fazlullah in Swat and other commanders in Bajaur and Orakzai were engaged simply because they were more manageable as targets in territories considered easy terrain. That strategy has partly paid off because the commanders have tended to run away to South Waziristan after being defeated in their regions. But the decision to go for South Waziristan is without a doubt more effective in lowering the prestige and outreach of TTP in the whole of Pakistan. TTP minions who cut a man’s both hands in Hangu on Tuesday for theft will be sorted out after Baitullah has got his comeuppance from the army. *

Second Editorial: Between ‘capability’ and ‘intent’

President Asif Ali Zardari has once again stated to a European news agency that India is no longer a military threat to Pakistan, while “the Taliban threaten not only the world, but also our way of life”. Then he added something that lies at the crux of the debate going on in Pakistan on the reality of the Indian threat: “The question is that India has the capability. Capability is what matters.”

He was referring to a fact of military strategy in which the states cannot afford to make subjective judgements about the intent to attack. It is accepted by all military thinkers that to assess threat from a state it is safer to look at the level of military preparedness of the said state rather than searching for intent that may not be clearly expressed. This truth has been derived from the fact that if a state has the intent to attack, its lack of capability will hamper its action.

Of course not all states can live in the world like that. Each state must define what it means by threat and the way it can defuse it. For instance, such a threat perception is not viable between two friendly states with unequal capability for attack. Should Canada look at the United States as potential attacker simply because it has the capability to attack? On the other extreme, how should one assess a state that lacks capability but has substantiated its “intent” to attack?

Pakistan doesn’t have the capability to attack India but has stood up against that state time and again. Should the military strategist abandon the yardstick of “capability” and adhere to the reality of “intent”? Pakistan seems to have stood a military concept on its head, even if its policy has claimed to rise out of an anticipation of Indian attack assessed on the basis of the latter’s capability.

It is in this perspective that President Zardari has had to repudiate Pakistan’s “intent” to attack India. The sub-text is that if Pakistan has attacked in the past out of fear then that fear has disappeared. Some people may not like this assertion but the jurisprudence of war between India and Pakistan tells us that Pakistan, on the basis of its “grand narrative”, has experienced “fear” in the past. Its assertion that it no longer feels that way opens the door for a dialogue of peace between the two neighbouring states. *

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