Pakistan offensive shows slow success

Network of caves and tunnels
The army found an extensive network of caves and tunnels reminiscent of those dug in the 1980s by Western-backed anti-communist rebels in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. In one compound of nine mud homes surrounded by a high wall, the army found six underground rooms and a maze of tunnels.

Kamal climbs a precarious steel ladder that leads to a lookout. Peering over sandbags lined up against the mud wall, he points toward a dark speck in a series of eroded sandstone hills.

"That's another cave. The tunnel runs from here, 100 meters to there."

More caves lie at the end of a 20-foot-deep (6.1-meter-deep), narrow mud staircase barely wide enough for a thin person. Inside the small underground rooms, the army finds bedding and weapons, from anti-tank guns modified to fire 22 mm mortars to homemade bombs planted by roads and detonated from afar as military vehicles pass.

The Nazirabad compound was one of several hubs established by militants in Bajur, Kamal says.

"We were expecting a lot of resistance, but these tactics — the tunnels. I never expected this," he says. "One room could hold five or six men."

Every day, Kamal's men search the caves to make sure the militants don't return.

Example of cooperation
The Bajur operation is an example of cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan, with U.S. forces on the Afghan side of the border providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to Pakistani forces.

"The Pakistani army's drive to retake this Taliban hotbed demonstrates to the world that they are serious about tackling the threat of terrorism," says Brian Glyn Williams, associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts.

However, Bajur is just one part — the northernmost of seven major jurisdictions — of the vast tribal belt that borders Afghanistan. The scorched-earth tactics in Bajur contrast with the softer approach taken farther south in another tribal area, Waziristan, where most of Pakistan's 70,000 soldiers are based. U.S. officials have questioned whether Pakistan is accommodating the insurgents in Waziristan rather than rooting them out.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, visiting Pakistan last week, praised the Bajur offensive but also encouraged the military to step up efforts elsewhere.

Battle-scarred town
Roughly nine miles farther, the convoy stops at Loi Sam, set in the middle of undulating corn fields.

This town has been flattened. The market that dominated the town square was pummeled to ruins. Electricity poles list to one side. The only gas station is half collapsed; giant holes mark where the pumps once stood.

It was early October when the army backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships drove the militants out of Loi Sam. But less than a week later, the militants were back, firing at soldiers from the buildings that remained standing. Only after a fierce air assault did the army take full control.

From Loi Sam, it's a short drive past seared fields and ruined villages to Sabagai, barely two miles from Afghanistan.

A white banner hanging inside a militant's former home in Sabagai is signed by "relatives of the martyrs of Kashmir." The banner is worrisome evidence of coordination among militant groups in the tribal area and those battling India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Two secret meetings revealed earlier this year by the AP also suggested militants are pooling their resources. Several militant groups — including Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed by India in the Mumbai attacks, and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another group with links to Kashmir — met to settle differences and forge common goals, according to a militant and a Pakistan military official.

Militant recruitment drive
The militants also called for a recruitment drive among the relatives of fighters killed in Kashmir. The banner in Sabagai suggests the drive has met with some success.

The persistence of the militants is sobering. Baloch gazes toward the towering peaks that embrace Bajur and straddle both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"They are still out there," Baloch says. "They are everywhere around us. ... The best we can do is make it difficult for them to move and to have free run of the area."

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