North Waziristan, the final frontier

There is an unoriginal saying in Pakistan that if you can't defeat your enemy, befriend him. This is particularly true about the tribal areas that border Afghanistan, where in six agencies, the army is in the middle of an unprecedented military offensive against the assorted militants that franchise out of these badlands.

Overturning a complex web of tactical alliances and ceasefire pacts in the Waziristans, Pakistan has gone in with conventional fire-power and the controversial overhang of US pilotless drones. The cornerstone of security policy here is to attack militants close to Al Qaida, but spare armed syndicates that protect Pakistan's flanks.

Turbulence on the terrorist radar in the border zone between Afghanistan and Pakistan has led to Washington putting out ill-advised strategic leaks about a possible military intervention within Pakistan's borders. The heart of the problem is a contested view on what will alter the dynamics of declining US-Nato successes in the Afghan theatre. North Waziristan, and what the Pakistan army is able to do there seems to have become the litmus test for relations between Islamabad and Washington. After the failed Faisal Shehzad bomb attack in Times Square, Washington's pressure on Islamabad to act against the anti-US Taliban operating out of North Waziristan Agency (NWA) has mounted to a new high. Islamabad pleads capacity constraints while the US cites commitment gaps.

The stakes are high all round. After the failure to build institutional structures in Afghanistan and to install governance or central authority, for Washington, the test of US-Nato ground offensives in the south and Loya Paktiya is now being linked to Pakistan's push on the Jalal Al Deen Haqqani-led group, an independent insurgent network that is closely allied with the Taliban, from NWA.

Existential battle

For Pakistan this is an existential battle for its stability and survival. The imperative to act against terrorist and sectarian groups in Punjab, in Balochistan, and of course the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are long overdue. After the massacre of nearly a hundred Ahmadis in Lahore recently at the hands of banned sectarian outfits, there is compulsion to act against entrenched extremist groups. In the Punjab, the provincial government needs to go in with a police-run counter-terror sweep against militants embedded in the warrens of its cities. The federal government needs to back up this action with pro-minority legislation. None of this requires the military to act, but all such actions will see heightened terrorist attacks on civilians and military alike. This is something that government will have to drill and brace for.

The challenge in NWA is that Islamabad does not have the military or civilian capacity to open all fronts at the same time. Caught in the cross-hairs of a blighted strategic endgame, a growing terrorist threat, a tanking economy, and Indian posturing on the east, the military option for North Waziristan cannot be a hair-trigger decision. The terrain itself has sobered the ambitions of several empires, including the British, the Russian and now perhaps even the American. At the same time, despite impressive successes in other tribal agencies, the Pakistan army faces a 50,000-strong critical mass of armed guerrilla combatants in NWA.

Pakistan has already lost over 3,000 people as a result of backlash terrorist attacks and taken an economic hit of $35 billion (Dh128.45 billion). The next question is, will the US be around to even hold down the hammer to Pakistan's fist when its army swoops down on this final frontier for targeted strikes at Al Qaida strongholds like Mir Ali? The military's tactical advantage is to pincer and choke the escape routes of enemy combatants.

The Waziristan trails that run through mountains higher than 8,000 feet, are legendary for affording escape routes to Afghanistan, so without the obvious rush to block contiguous border conduits from Nato commanders in Afghanistan, the whole exercise will lead to enemy-dispersal in hospitable terrain. Given the asymmetry in border check-posts on both sides of the Durand Line, it is unlikely that any permanent flush-out of the Waziristans is possible.

Another key question is how long can the Pakistani army stay bogged in the agencies it has actually secured? What capacity do we have for a civilian build, hold and transition component to the project? Once again, before pressuring Pakistan with escalating a war that the US itself cannot manage now in Afghanistan, huge governance commitments will have to roll off the US machine.

The military will have to stay in Waziristan until the police and Frontier Corps in that area are strengthened by quantum proportions, the tribal leadership prepared for critical reforms and political activity by mainstream parties. While the military presses an offensive in Orakzai agency, there will be little room to divert forces for anything more than strategic strikes on NWA areas where the terrorists cluster. Pakistan must dismantle Al Qaida as well as the India-centric extremist outfits as a priority. It also must allow Kabul to form its own stable government and hope for a friendly partner. But it will need Pashtun friends to maintain stability from Afghan border provinces after the expected US troop drawdown in 2011, and seeking more than surgical raids in NWA is asking too much. Pakistan must act decisively against terrorists, but on its own game-plan.

Sherry Rehman is Member of the National Security Committee in Pakistan's Parliament and former federal minister for information.