ISLAMABAD – Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari can be well pleased with his recent visit to New York, securing US$1.5 billion annually for five years in non-military aid and gaining unprecedented political support from over two dozen heads of states under the Friends of Democratic Pakistan initiative.

Now it is the turn of the military to deliver following its successful campaign this year in the Swat Valley in North-West Frontier Province: it is poised for a major operation in the heart of Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda territory, the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

The need for this operation in the two Waziristans, over which the Pakistani armed forces had previously expressed grave concerns, was agreed on in a meeting in New York last week between the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US security officials and Zardari, who is also the supreme commander of the armed forces.

The director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, has been in the US to coordinate the operation with the US. The aim, simply, is to conclusively defeat al-Qaeda at its global headquarters in the Waziristans.

Adding urgency to task was the brazen attack on Monday by a suicide bomber dressed as a member of the paramilitary Frontiers Corps on the United Nations’ World Food Program’s headquarters in the capital Islamabad, killing at least five aid workers.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Tuesday that the Taliban carried out the attack to avenge the August 5 killing in a US Predator drone missile attack in South Waziristan of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. “We should expect a few more [attacks],” he said.

Asia Times Online has learned that the operation in the Waziristans will be actively supported with technical and intelligence support from the CIA for Pakistani ground troops as well as the air force.

Pakistan is confident that the chances of success are higher than ever, even though the military will be venturing into dangerous territory and that previous operations in other tribal areas have proved highly divisive and unpopular across much of the country.

Malik told Asia Times Online recently in New York that the time was now ripe as it is believed all of the top al-Qaeda commanders of the South Asian region, in addition to commanders who have fled Iraq, are now based in the Waziristans.

The Pakistani political establishment is also upbeat in that there is a new positive mood in the country; even the stock exchange has surged to its highest levels in one-and-a-half-years. But most importantly, the tone in the military establishment has changed.

Immediately after the president’s return to Pakistan, armed forces spokesman Major General Athar Abbas, who had earlier rejected the idea of an operation in the Waziristans, speaking from the garrison city of Rawalpindi, confirmed that the tribal areas would be attacked.

“It [the operation] is only a matter of time, which of course, the military will not disclose or give any hint about.”

Abbas did hint hint, though. He said the weather could be one of the many factors that planners were taking into account – the winter snows are well set in by late November.

“The rudderless leadership of the terrorists provides an ideal opportunity to launch operations and inflict a severe blow to the terrorists,” Abbas said, presumably referring to the killing of Baitullah Mehsud.

The army has mounted several operations in the two Waziristans, but they have all resulted in heavy casualties. As a result, the military has tended to sign peace deals, most of them on the militants’ terms and conditions. This gave a morale boost to the militants, and after each operation their numbers increased, and numbers which were pumped into Afghanistan to aid the insurgency there.

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By Syed Saleem Shahzad
October 7th, 2009