Pakistan offensive shows slow success

updated 2:59 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2008

SABAGAI, Pakistan - From atop a craggy hillock, the silver-haired Lt. Col. Javed Baloch gestures toward a small black opening in a sandstone outcropping. It's the mouth of a cave.

Two minutes later a powerful explosion rattles the hillock, and a massive plume of grayish-white smoke rushes skyward.

Cave by cave, the Pakistani army is trying to blow up the underground labyrinth running from tribal areas toward the border with Afghanistan to keep militants away.

This is the front line of Pakistan's battle against militants on its own soil. The three-month-old offensive is the country's most aggressive effort to date, countering U.S. and Afghan charges that it is not doing enough to root out Taliban and al-Qaida fighters who crisscross the border. It is also the Pakistani military's first foray into the Bajur region, where militants are dug in and have in places set up a parallel administration.

An Associated Press team traveled with the Pakistani military deep into a tribal area late last month, almost to the Afghan border. The operation shows the army can put pressure on militants and even wrest some territory back from them, but it may never be able to drive them out from a rugged area of nooks and crannies. More militants are already sneaking in from Afghanistan as reinforcements, and U.S. troops in Afghanistan have installed 68 motion sensors along the border to try to detect them.

Battle for Bajur
The battle is for Bajur, a key base and transit route for Arab and other foreign militants headed for Afghanistan. Here a CIA drone once targeted al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, without success.

Any progress, however, is now in danger from an unexpected front. The recent terrorist attack in Mumbai has raised the prospect that Pakistan might shift troops from its tribal regions to the border with India. Both sides want to avoid a confrontation, but emotions are running high.

In the meantime, the Pakistani army has used helicopter gunships and fighter jets to blast entire villages in Bajur to rubble, driving 250,000 tribesmen out of their homes and burying 82 of their own soldiers. Pakistan has battled militants in tribal areas before, but never with such intensity.

"I feel hurt. There is so much destruction. That is why always we are trying to prevent war, but we were left with no choice," Baloch says.

He bristles at any U.S. questioning of the will of Pakistani soldiers to fight the militants.

"Listen, I have picked up the bodies of my dead soldiers and carried them out. I haven't left a body behind. Do you think this is something we do without pain in our heart?" he asked. "I tell everyone who is saying we aren't doing enough, 'Send your brothers, your fathers, your uncles and I will take them into battle with me. I will show them.'"

Convoy of Pakistani soldiers
The convoy of Pakistani soldiers rumbles out of Khar on a crisp morning, a slight mist hanging in the air.

It was from here, the capital of Bajur, that the army had launched its offensive on Sept. 8. Previously, only the ill-equipped Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force, was deployed in Bajur.

"Since it was ignored, not easily accessible, it was an ideal breeding ground," says Gen. Tariq Khan, the commander of the Frontier Corps.

In August, the Frontier Corps fought militants in one village in Bajur but was driven out with several dead and many more wounded. That's when the army was called in.

The army has since wrested control of the key road link from Khar, clearing the road of insurgents. As of late last week, troops were taking their offensive into the Mohmand tribal belt that borders Afghanistan.

The signs of battle litter the roadside: flattened markets, bomb craters and mud homes scarred by mortar fire.

At Nazirabad, six miles (10 kilometers) from Khar, troops faced a two-day battle against nearly 100 militants. Insurgents popped up from fields of shoulder-high corn stalks to launch rockets or fire bursts with Kalashnikov rifles, then seemingly disappeared, says Maj. Kamal, who gave only his first name. Two soldiers were killed and 22 wounded.

"We couldn't see where they were firing from," Kamal says. "We discovered later that they would fire at us and then run into caves hidden by the corn."

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