Pakistan’s Civil War Heating Up

In the after­math of this weekend’s assault on the Pak­istani Gen­eral Head­quar­ters in Rawalpindi, the Tal­iban hit again in Alpuri, in the Shangla dis­trict east of Min­gora in Swat.

Accord­ing to mil­i­tary sources who asked to remain anony­mous because they weren’t autho­rized to talk to the press, a 13– or 14-year-old boy walked up to an Army con­voy in the crowded bazaar and blew him­self up, killing at least 35 civil­ians and six sol­diers. More than 45 were wounded.

Mean­while, the Pak­istani Air Force bombed sus­pected Tal­iban tar­gets in Bajur and South Waziris­tan, killing 31 sus­pected mil­i­tants. There is no way to con­firm the num­ber or iden­tity of the per­sons killed, however.

Today’s blood­shed fol­lows this weekend’s stun­ning attack and hostage drama on the military’s Gen­eral Head­quar­ters in the gar­ri­son town of Rawalpindi. It is now clear that the Pak­istani Tal­iban have not been defeated, have regrouped and can strike when and where they please. Indeed, the TTP claimed this weekend’s attack and promised more.

“We will take revenge for our mar­tyrs and will carry out more attacks, whether it’s the GHQ or some­thing big­ger,” said Tal­iban spokesman Azam Tariq. “This was our first small effort and a present to the Pak­istani and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments,” he added.

For its part, the gov­ern­ment seems to real­ize the dan­ger of a resur­gent Taliban.

“We are going to attack the ter­ror­ists, the mis­cre­ants over there who are dis­turb­ing the state and dam­ag­ing the peace,” Infor­ma­tion Min­is­ter Qamar Zaman Kaira said. “Wher­ever they will be, we will fol­low them. We will pur­sue them. We will take them to task.”

Despite such bravado, the long-anticipated ground oper­a­tion against South Waziristan—rumored to be in immi­nent for months—has not hap­pened despite prod­ding by the United States. Per­haps the attack on the GHQ will be the final straw, as 28,000 Pak­istani troops await the order to attack a sus­pected 10,000 mil­i­tants holed up in the moun­tain­ous ter­rain of the tribal belt. It will be ugly, though. While the Swat Val­ley offen­sive saw a rel­a­tively small num­ber of casu­al­ties among the Pak­istani forces, the fight in Waziris­tan, where the mil­i­tants are more dug in and pre­pared, the ter­rain rougher and the pop­u­la­tion more con­ser­v­a­tive and insu­lar, promises to have a high num­ber of casu­al­ties. The ques­tion now is whether the Pak­istani mil­i­tary and the pub­lic, which cur­rently sup­ports the military’s actions against the mil­i­tants at an unprece­dented level, will have the will to endure the body count.

In short, what is loom­ing is noth­ing short of civil war, or at least a nasty fam­ily feud. Many of these mil­i­tants now in the army’s crosshairs were sup­ported by the secu­rity estab­lish­ment not that long ago, but over the last few years the mil­i­tants have become more rad­i­cal­ized and turned on their old mas­ters. For the gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary, after the brazen week­end assault and siege that saw 11 sol­diers killed and dozens held hostage, this has become personal.

“Slowly but surely, the bat­tle lines between the army and mil­i­tants are get­ting clearer,” said Ish­tiaq Ahmed, an inter­na­tional rela­tions pro­fes­sor at Quaid-i-Azam Uni­ver­sity in Islamabad.

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