ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s prime minister backtracked on earlier comments Saturday that a military campaign against the Taleban in their South Waziristan bastion had ended, saying the offensive was continuing.
In televised comments from the eastern city of Lahore, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters the military operation in South Waziristan had concluded and that the army may now shift focus to the Orakzai tribal region where militants are believed to have fled. But Gilani later said though the army had captured Taleban strongholds in South Waziristan, the offensive had not yet ended
“I may have said it in a different context,” he told reporters in the city of Karachi in comments broadcast live by state-run television. “Our army operation in South Waziristan is going on quite successfully ... and I can’t tell any timeline (for its conclusion).”
Anti-militant offensives are handled by Pakistan’s powerful army, which has been reluctant to set any time frame for such campaigns. The operation in South Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan, was the army’s biggest in years involving 30,000 troops.
Pakistan’s military says 589 militants and 79 soldiers have been killed in the South Waziristan campaign since it was launched in mid-October. Militants have hit back with bombings that have killed hundreds of civilians elsewhere in the country.
The suggestion of another anti-Taleban operation illustrates the intractable challenge facing Pakistan. Even as its squeezes one extremist stronghold in its northwest, insurgents simply regroup in other parts of the rugged, loosely governed region.
Security officials say many of the militants are believed to have fled South Waziristan to Orakzai, North Waziristan and the Kurram tribal areas. Orakzai is believed to be the base of Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of Pakistani Taleban insurgents, and is part of Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border, which is seen as a global hub for Al-Qaeda and other militant groups.
Intelligence officials say paramilitary forces have been cracking down on militants in Orakzai for several weeks. Warplanes also often attack militant targets.
Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for Pakistan’s tribal regions who has deep contacts in the military, said Pakistan has succeeded in South Waziristan in that it has destroyed much of the Pakistani Taleban’s physical infrastructure, but it could not ignore Orakzai if it wanted to eliminate the insurgent leadership.
Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda denied Saturday it was behind the series of bombings in Pakistan, calling such attacks un-Islamic. In an English-language video, US-born Al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn said the extremist network was being framed for the bloodshed by the US and Pakistani intelligence services. Pakistani authorities have laid blame for the recent spate of attacks on the Pakistani Taleban or their affiliates, which include Al-Qaeda and other local militant groups.
