A year in North Waziristan, what has Pakistan achieved?

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan

When the Taliban attacked Pakistan's main international airport in Karachi last year it marked the definitive end of winter peace talks with the government but also sparked an army onslaught that, on Monday, has lasted a year.

On June 15 2014, the army began bombarding the restive northwestern North Waziristan tribal area, where the Taliban had established a stronghold, in an attempt to eradicate the militant group and its allies. 

A year on however, while the army has been able to dismantle the command control system of the main Taliban umbrella group, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and purportedly killed 2,700 of their fighters, analysts believe fighters have only shifted away from their rural strongholds and towards major urban areas. 

They observe that urban areas like the bustling commercial capital Karachi provide cover for small militant groups. The groups have carried out attacks on civilians in cities, including the killing of 145 at a school in Peshawar in December and, more recently, the shooting of 45 from the Shia-Ismaili minority on a bus in Karachi last month. 

"No doubt, the army has achieved much from a military point of view. It has uprooted the TTP and its allies from their strongholds, except from a few in tribal areas. But this is not sufficient to declare the military operation successful," Ikram Sehgal, a Karachi-based security analyst, told Anadolu Agency.

He believes the army has become mired in fighting in the far-flung and mountainous Shawal valley, which sits near the border with Afghanistan and, as the new bastion for the Taliban, has become the focal point of U.S. drone strikes. 

The Shawal valley poses specific geographical challenges for the army but its operations have also meant the Taliban fanning out across the northwestern tribal belt, leading to clashes and ambushes spread across North Waziristan and the neighboring Khyber Agency, South Waziristan, Orakzai Agency and Bajur Agency.

"The major challenge is how to flush out militants attacking and hiding in urban areas," Seghal said. "Unfortunately, militants have found hideouts in Karachi and southern parts of Punjab province. In fact, I consider southern Punjab more dangerous, where militant groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi already have strong roots."

– Returning the refugees

One of the biggest setbacks, according to analysts, has been the repeatedly postponed return of displaced people from North Waziristan and Khyber Agency, where the military operation spread to in October. 

Though the government first announced a "rehabilitation process" last March, only a few hundred have returned to their hometowns, with almost 90 percent of operation-hit areas, including the administrative headquarters Miranshah, still not declared safe by the army.

"This is a huge challenge that needs to be addressed. Unfortunately, I do not see the immediate return of displaced tribesmen as the chance of militants mixing up with common tribesmen is still there," Sehgal said. 

Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Peshawar-based expert on tribal affairs, also believes the return will be delayed. 

“Those who were expecting an early return of IDPs [internally displaced persons] should have remembered the IDPs of South Waziristan who have been wandering across the country for last six years," Yusufzai told Anadolu Agency, referring to a similar anti-Taliban operation in 2009 which ultimately pushed the Taliban base from South Waziristan to North Waziristan. 

The internal refugees, while they await a return, are also suffering from the social and financial challenges of being displaced, with many of those who moved to major cities saying they feel like "second-class citizens" because they are often refused access to rented homes, bank account and jobs. 

“We are being treated as foreigners. Security forces suspect all the tribesmen are terrorists or their supporters,” Behzad Mehsud, a refugee from South Waziristan living in a suburb of Karachi, told Anadolu Agency.

“I went to apply at a private security agency but the manager refused to hire me after seeing my national identification card that bears my postal address of South Waziristan,” he said. “What choice has the government left for us? I want to warn the government that either let us go back or treat us as equal citizens of Pakistan. Don’t throw our youth into the hands of terrorists.”

– The fight against polio

Potentially the greatest success of the army's military operations is the reduction in polio that it appears to have facilitated. 

According to the World Health Organization, there have only been 24 polio cases reported in the first five months of 2015, a 70 percent reduction on the same period last year. 

Officials said the ongoing operation has made hundreds of thousands of children in the tribal region accessible to the vaccinators who earlier had their entry barred by militants. 

“Before the military operation, over 250,000 children below five years were completely inaccessible to us. But after the operation, now the numbers have gone down to around 40,000,” said Dr. Rahim Khattak, an anti-polio official in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Nigeria and Afghanistan are the only countries other than Pakistan where polio is endemic. Last year had been the worst for Pakistan, with 302 polio cases reported and 80 percent of them coming from the tribal region. 

Khattak said local elders and religious scholars have also intervened more to ensure that parents do not refuse vaccinations because of old taboos and common myths that polio drops are western designs to sterilize Muslim children.

Vaccinators working in northwestern Pakistan have in the past also been heavily targeted by the Taliban, with 44 killed after the militant group began enforcing a de-facto ban on anti-polio campaigns after one was used as cover by the CIA in a bid to find Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.