Pakistan Plots Showdown With Taliban

(March 9) -- Having wrested control of one key region in Pakistan's northwest from a weakened Pakistani Taliban, the country's military leaders have announced they will launch a new operation against one of the militants' few remaining safe havens, perhaps within days.

Last week's announcement that Pakistani forces had taken over the Bajur tribal agency, a longstanding Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold, was seen as the latest in a line of successes in recent months in the country's battle against Islamic militancy.

But the true test will come now that the Pakistani Taliban has shifted south to the Orakzai Agency, where the militants are preparing for what some observers are calling their last stand. Sources in the region tell AOL News that thousands of Taliban and foreign fighters have gathered in that part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border.

"There are Arabs and Uzbeks here as well as Pakistanis and Afghans," one local source reported in a telephone conversation, requesting anonymity. "They are preparing for the Pakistani military operation."

In recent weeks, reports have emerged that the Pakistani Taliban's new leader, Noor Jamal Tofani, is the former commander for Orakzai. Some analysts see his selection as a strategic move to give the fighters in the region a leader who knows the terrain and can mount a sustainable counterattack.

Others, however, doubt that the Taliban has enough cohesiveness left to resist any military offensive. "They are disjointed," says retired Pakistani military officer Col. Baseer Malik, now working as a security analyst in Islamabad. "Choosing Tofani as the new leader is in fact reflective of just how desperate they are -- it breaks all the rules of succession in their tribal society."

The Pakistani Taliban has been led since its inception by men from the Mehsud tribe, with its home base in South Waziristan. But a U.S. missile killed Baitullah Mehsud last August, and a U.S. drone took out his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, in January. A leader from another tribe could further fragment the movement, but that is a risk Taliban leaders appear willing -- or forced -- to make.

A string of Pakistani military victories throughout the northwest has given Pakistanis some hope that the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the umbrella group for the country's Islamic militancy, is on the decline. That's not to say, however, that it doesn't retain a potent operational capability. On Monday the group killed at least 14 in Lahore with a suicide car bombing reportedly targeting a house that Pakistan security agencies used to interrogate terror suspects.

"The Taliban aren't necessarily finished at all in Pakistan," says Anwar Shah, a businessman in the Swat Valley, where a string of attacks over the past weeks have forced authorities to reimpose a curfew. "The fighting season has just started. We'll see over the coming weeks where they stand."

The military's victories have proved short-lived, with each military statement announcing Taliban defeat often followed by word that the militants had shifted operations to another region. "This is definitely a cat and mouse chase now," says Malik. "But their capabilities are gone, so this can no longer be considered a difficult task for the Pakistani army."

The game is beginning to wear thin for Pakistanis, who are increasingly disillusioned by the successive offensives and frustrated by the security forces' inability to prevent suicide attacks.

But Malik defends the military strategy, arguing that no army can stop suicide attacks. He argues that Pakistan's progress against its native Taliban forces is evident in how what was once a strictly military approach has changed in large part into an intelligence operation, in which the arrests or killing of key Taliban leaders keeps the movement disorganized and fragmented.

"They are leaderless now," Malik adds. "There is no overarching command structure to keep them focused."

But as the Pakistani Taliban disintegrates into small, semiautonomous groups, their ability to carry on a low-level guerrilla war indefinitely has the potential to lock Pakistan into a cycle of violence that could erode the people's already weak trust in the government.

For many Pakistani insiders, that is a nightmare scenario -- a nation perpetually beset by violence where long-term peace and prosperity remain as elusive as they have been for the past 30 years.

"Nothing has changed," says Dr. Aasim Sajjad, assistant professor at the National Institute for Pakistan Studies in Islamabad. "These kinds of arrests and so-called victories have happened before, but there still isn't any change in the basic thinking of the establishment." He adds that efforts to counter the radicalization of society remain nonexistent.

Nonetheless, Pakistani authorities are trying to at least create the impression that they are embarking on a new path.

Last month saw the arrest of the Afghan Taliban's No. 2 leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, as well as other key figures. The detention last weekend of an American citizen -- initially thought to be Adam Gadahn, the U.S.-born al-Qaida propagandist wanted in the United States for treason but now reported to be another man from Pennsylvania -- is meant to signal a major upshift in Pakistan's anti-terrorism policy.

But Pakistan authorities have so far refused to extradite the prisoners to Afghanistan, where they are wanted for murder and other crimes against the Afghan state, or to allow the CIA access to them. That reluctance has raised doubts as to whether Pakistan is genuine in its new cooperative approach.

For former military men like Malik, however, the Pakistan army now has a chance of consolidating its successes once and for all.

"Now is the time for the Pakistani authorities to build on the progress they've made against the militants," he says. "There is still a chance they could re-establish themselves. We cannot give them that chance."