LAHORE – Pakistan’s refusal to launch a military operation in North Waziristan to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries on its northwest border may have created a magnet there for hundreds of fighters, which has a positive side for the US, according to a report in the New York Times (NYT).
The report said that a growing number of senior US intelligence and counterinsurgency officials were of the opinion that by bunching up there, insurgents were ultimately making it easier for American drone strikes to hit them from afar. “In some ways, it’s to our benefit to keep them bottled up, mostly in North Waziristan,” NYT quoted a senior intelligence official as saying on condition of anonymity.
“This is not intentional. That wasn’t the design to bottle them up. That’s just where they are, and they’re there for a reason. They don’t have a lot of options,” the official added. According to the report, half a dozen senior intelligence, counter-terrorism and military officials interviewed in the past several days said a bright side had unexpectedly emerged from the country’s delay. Pounding the militants consolidated in the North Waziristan enclave with air strikes would leave the insurgents in a weakened state if the Pakistani offensive comes later this year, the officials added.
With several hundred insurgents largely bottled up there, and with few worries about accidentally hitting Pakistani soldiers battling militants or civilians fleeing a combat zone, the Central Intelligence Agency’s drones have attacked targets in North Waziristan with increasing effectiveness and have degraded Al Qaeda’s ability to carry out a major attack against the US, the report quoted the senior officials, as saying.
US officials are loath to talk about this silver lining to the storm cloud that they have long described building up in North Waziristan, where the insurgents run a virtual mini-state the size of Rhode Island, the report said. This is because they do not want to undermine the Obama administration’s urgent public pleas for Pakistan to order troops into the area, or to give Pakistan an excuse for inaction, the report added.
“We cannot succeed in Afghanistan without shutting down those safe havens,” Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week.
