Crowds of angry protesters are making their presence felt in Peshawar. Laden with the bodies of their loved ones — some 14 coffins in all — these 300 people from Bara district in FATA, are crying hoarse over the death and destruction they say visited their homes in the middle of the night when security forces entered and opened fire on their relatives. The security forces deny these accusations but the protesters are not backing down. They have already clashed with the police and have been countered with batons and tear gas shelling. Why would the security forces do such a thing, one might wonder. Within the failure of our counterinsurgency policy lies the answer.
Bara is a particularly volatile area in FATA as it is the arms market of Pakistan, a place where it is believed the logistics operators of the militant organisations reside and plan from. Militants are known to be teeming in the area. Bara is located in the Khyber Agency and is linked to the Tirah Valley, which is a known redoubt of the militants as it, in turn, is connected to Orakzai Agency. The failure of our army operations so far has been due to the fact that if a campaign is launched in Khyber, the militants cross over to Orakzai and if a campaign is initiated in Orakzai then the reverse happens. The only people to get caught in the crosshairs are the tribal citizens, involuntary bystanders of the army’s ill-advised strategy and the militants’ cunning. They claim that militants use them as human shields, entering their homes and hiding from the army. It is speculated that just such an incident may have happened when the security forces opened fire on the homes of these protesting tribal people. Such tragic incidents are bound to occur when the army fails to consolidate its efforts and come up with an effective strategy to identify exactly where the militants are holed up, seal off their escape routes, encircle them and then annihilate them. Piecemeal measures where security forces only concentrate on one area — which allows militants to run and regroup elsewhere — will never succeed as a counter-insurgency plan. It is because of this ineffectiveness that tribal leaders have, in many areas, formed peace lashkars (militias) with the tacit approval of the security forces. However, the army has failed to support and arm them, resulting in most of their members being savagely targeted by the militants. It is little wonder then that such protests are being seen. In the battleground that is their home, they have been squashed between the militants and the unsuccessful strategy of the army. Charging at them during their peaceful protest will only aggravate their frustrations. It is time we supported the tribal people who wish to see the militants meet their end as much as the rest of us. *