WANA, Pakistan, 24 March 2004 — Assailants launched two rocket attacks on Pakistani forces in ultraconservative regions on the edge of a bloody offensive against Al-Qaeda militants, raising fears that the crackdown may be met by a wider backlash from enraged tribal fighters.
The attacks killed 15 soldiers and illustrated the dangerous line President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is walking as he seeks to appease Washington without tearing apart his country’s delicate equilibrium.
Late Monday, attackers ambushed a Pakistani Army convoy some 50 km (30 miles) to the east of Wana, hitting at least six trucks, some of them carrying gasoline to the military operation.
A government official in Sarwakai where the attack happened said that at least 12 soldiers were killed and 15 injured as the vehicles exploded into flames. The assailants apparently fled unharmed.
Meanwhile, about 200 km (120 miles) to the northeast, assailants fired rockets on an army checkpoint Monday, killing three soldiers and wounding four others, a senior security officer said.
That attack happened in Parachinar, in North Waziristan, where two other rocket attacks were reported overnight, causing no injuries.
Brig. Mahmood Shah, chief of security for the tribal areas, confirmed both attacks, but refused to give details about casualties.
Lawmakers from a hard-line religious alliance that holds power in the North West Frontier Province, where the operation is unfolding, have called for nationwide protests against the offensive.
“We demand that army and paramilitary troops should be immediately withdrawn,” said Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a lawmaker in Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a leading party in the hard-line alliance.
“This is our army and we will not let them be used for American interests,” he said at a conference in the southwestern city of Quetta. “Gen. Musharraf is carrying out this operation to make (President George W.) Bush’s election campaign a success.”
The weeklong military operation, near the town of Wana, is the largest since Musharraf threw the government’s support behind the US-led war on terrorism in late 2001 — a move which was welcomed by some but disenchanted many.
The battleground is in South Waziristan, one of the seven semiautonomous tribal regions near the Afghan border which has long valued its independence. Many tribesmen resent Musharraf’s decision to deploy 70,000 troops there over the past two years to help seal the rugged frontier, and sympathize with Afghanistan’s former Taleban rulers and Al-Qaeda.
The militants’ last redoubt in mud-brick fortresses was quiet for much of yesterday but the sound of heavy guns reverberated in the evening.
