Army Plans Offensive in Pakistan's Northwest
Pitched Battles Follow Killing Of 17 Troops by Insurgents

By Griff Witte and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 19, 2007; A10

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 19 -- The Pakistani army fought pitched battles with militants Wednesday in a restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan following an insurgent assault that killed 17 troops.

The fighting in North Waziristan, an area where the al-Qaeda leadership is believed to be active, went on late into the night, residents said. A local official confirmed that at least six loud explosions were heard in the hills that surround Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan. It was not immediately clear who or what had been targeted.

The fighting came during a period of deep turmoil in Pakistan, with radical fighters carrying out a string of deadly attacks after a government raid against a mosque in Islamabad last week.

On Sunday, Taliban fighters in North Waziristan renounced a controversial peace deal that had held for 10 months and had prevented the military from carrying out operations in the area. The deal angered U.S. officials, who considered it a primary reason why al-Qaeda was able to reorganize.

Pakistani officials have tried to revive the deal, but those efforts appeared to break down Wednesday as the violence in North Waziristan escalated.

Early Wednesday morning, Taliban fighters launched a well-coordinated strike against a group of soldiers, killing 17 and wounding more than a dozen. The fighters first hit the troops with a roadside bomb, then with an ambush. In a separate attack in North Waziristan, one soldier and six civilians were injured, and clashes later in the day left five Taliban fighters dead, the military said. Early on Thursday, a suicide bomber killed seven and injured 22 at a police training center in the northwest city of Hangu.

More than 100 people -- most of them members of the security forces -- have been killed in attacks in recent days. Military officials vowed Wednesday to strike back.

"There will now be a full-scale military action against Taliban hideouts in the entire tribal areas," a Pakistani brigadier general said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the record.

A second brigadier general, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Pakistani army was receiving help from the U.S. military in tracking the fighters, including aerial surveillance from U.S.-supplied drones.

The officials added that the government would still attempt to negotiate with relatively moderate tribal leaders in hopes of cleaving them from hard-core militants. A jirga, or assembly, was planned for Thursday with that goal in mind.

The United States has long been pushing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to do more to counter the extremist threat. A U.S. intelligence estimate released Tuesday highlighted his government's shortcomings, noting that al-Qaeda has been able to reestablish itself in the ungoverned areas of northwestern Pakistan.

"President Musharraf attempted to engage in . . . carrot diplomacy with tribal leaders in the tribal areas and it didn't work," White House spokesman Tony Snow said Wednesday. "So what you have to do when something doesn't work is you have to fix it, and that's what's going on now."

Violence has soared this year in neighboring Afghanistan, while more parts of northwestern Pakistan have fallen under the Taliban's sway.

"The back yard of the Afghanistan conflict is Pakistan. And Pakistan will be drawn in more and more," said Ayaz Amir, a leading political commentator. "Pakistan's become like Cambodia during the war in Vietnam."

The spillover has not been limited to the remote border regions of the northwest. The wide avenues of normally sedate Islamabad were the scene of a bombing Tuesday night targeting members of Pakistan's largest opposition group, who had gathered for an anti-Musharraf rally. At least 15 people were killed.

The government said extremists were to blame. But leaders of the Pakistan People's Party continued to suggest Wednesday that the attack might have been the work of the country's powerful intelligence agencies.

"We think it was a bomb planted by those who wish to create a sense of anarchy so they can postpone elections and declare emergency rule," said party spokesman Farhatullah Babar.

The party's leader, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has been in discussions with Musharraf's government about a possible power-sharing arrangement. But the viability of the talks was in doubt Wednesday, Babar said, after 11 party activists died in the blast and more than 35 were injured, including senior party officials who lost limbs.

Musharraf, meeting with journalists Wednesday, said he has no plans to declare a state of emergency.

He also said he wants to be reelected to a five-year term by the outgoing parliament while remaining head of the army.

Musharraf has faced stiff challenges this year from two distinct camps: moderates who want to defeat him at the polls and bring an end to eight years of military rule, and extremists who want to overthrow his government so they can implement a theocracy.

Musharraf last week vowed an initiative to stamp out extremism. But security analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi noted that Pakistan has already tried that. Before last year's peace deal, he said, the military lost hundreds of troops fighting extremists in the tribal areas but achieved little success.

"There's a limit to what they can do," Rizvi said. "For three years they operated in North Waziristan, and that has not solved the problem."

Khan reported from Karachi. Special correspondents Shahzad Khurram in Islamabad and Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.