Road to Salvation


Written by S.G. Jilanee • Region • December 2009

Operation Rah-e-Nijat has been appropriately named as it promises deliverance from the Talibans' torment.You must give it to our army high command on a platter. For coining codenames for operations that are second to none - not even the US. The latter, for instance, codenamed its Iraq invasion as "Operation Iraq Freedom" and its Afghanistan occupation as "Enduring Freedom," but both were insipid, bland, unimaginative, lacking the zip that thrills.

In contrast look at such code-names as Operation Gibraltar, or Grand Slam that triggered the 1965 war with India. The attempts to capture Kashmir may have been abortive and ended in Pakistan's loss of face and the Indo-Pak Treaty of Tashkent, but none can deny the surge of adrenaline that the two names would inject even in the most weak and listless.

Or, take Operation Searchlight, with its beam focused on the Bengali mukti bahini guerillas in former East Pakistan in 1971. Could there be anything more meaningful and realistic? Once again, though the tables were ultimately turned on the operators, yet the profundity of the codename remains beyond question. In a land full of lush foliage providing cover to insurgents, a searchlight was the only tool that could locate them.

The same high level of imagination has gone into coining the latest codenames for the Swat and South Waziristan operations. Both belong to the "Road series." The former was Rah-e-Rast; the latter is Rah-e-Nijat. Translated into English they would read, respectively, as "The Straight Path" and the "Road to Salvation."

Both inspire. The Straight Path or sirat-e-mustaqeem is one that every practising Muslim seeks in every prayer five times a day. It was therefore a great hit. Liberals had already been in the vanguard baying for Taliban blood. But moderates were lukewarm. The appeal of the Straight Path in the codename fired their religious zeal to white heat and they lent their fullest support to the operation. According to the latest reports, it is in full occupation. Taliban, to the last man, have been eliminated from Malakand. Maulana Fazlullah's voice is no more heard from his mobile FM radio. Peace reigns.

Having been put on the Straight Path by the army, displaced people have returned home and taken up their normal chores. Civil administration is back in place. Schools and cinemas have reopened. Barbers, CD shop operators, lawyers and prostitutes, all have resumed their trades. Tourists are flocking and everything is hunky-dory in the earthly paradise that is Swat.

Having achieved spectacular success in the Swat operation that drew tributes even from the niggardly Americans, the army, with a strength of 30,000 troops, assisted by Air Force fighter planes and helicopter gunships, has, since, embarked on Rah-e-Nijat - the Road to Salvation. It also means the road to deliverance, so the army has vowed to deliver South Waziristan of the militant menace forever.

The road to salvation is said to be extremely difficult, thorny and pocked with pitfalls. Salvation seekers have, therefore been known historically to have gone through prolonged periods of rigorous penance that included retreating to caves and jungles, starving for days on end, living on leaves and barks of trees and facing the fury of the elements. It was after such penance that Prince Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha or Enlightened.

South Waziristan, similarly, is far from a cakewalk. The landscape is forbiddingly inhospitable. The people, Mahsuds, against whose leaders the operation has been launched, are traditionally acclaimed as tough warriors. The area remained invincible to all attempts so far, by whosoever, including the Brits, to capture and bring it under government control.

Receiving full support from seasoned Uzbek and other foreign elements, indigenous militants initially offered strong resistance to the marching troops. Both sides have suffered casualties, though militants have suffered more fatalities than the army. According to the DG, ISPR, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, 492 militants were killed since 17 October when the operation was launched, up to 10 November. Another five were killed on the next day carrying the tally to 497.

Meanwhile the army, with the advantage of air support, is sweeping through the entire area, destroying the militants' caves, bunkers, towers and observation posts and capturing all the towns one by one. Resistance seems to have petered out before the onslaught. Even Baitullah Mahsood's home has been blown up which has further demoralised the enemy.

But there is no trace of the Prize - Hakimullah Mahsud, whose capture, dead or alive, carries a hefty reward. Moreover, all reports about the "Pilgrim's Progress" on the road to salvation issue from the ISPR chief. Every day he releases casualty figures of both sides, in which the number of the enemy dead outnumber troop fatalities by about four to one. He also lists new territorial gains, arms and ammo seized, as well as enemy taken or surrendered.

None of his statements are verified by independent sources because even local media persons are not allowed to cover the fighting. That is why Athar Abbas has already earned the sobriquet of Pakistan's Baghdad Bob. The title was given to Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information who, even on April 7, 2003, one day before he was captured, had claimed that "there were no American troops in Baghdad" and that the Americans were "committing suicide by the hundreds at the city's gates," while American tanks were already patrolling the streets only a few hundred meters from the location where he was holding the press conference!

Meanwhile, Azam Tariq, spokesman for Hakimullah Mehsud and TTP, claimed in a telephonic call to reporters from an undisclosed location that the Army had so far captured only roads while the Taliban were holding the key locations in forests and mountains. He was also quoted as saying that they had adopted the hit-and-run policy and were preparing to fight a long guerrilla war against the advancing Army.

This statement might explain the near absence of resistance to the army's march. Taliban had similarly "dissolved" when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001. In fact speculations are already rife that Hakimullah and many militants have escaped to adjoining Orakzai Agency, Dera Ismail Khan and North Waziristan, mixing with the hordes of displaced families from South Waziristan.

Nevertheless, ground realities could belie the doubts about the success course of the operation for the simple reason that such doubts are founded in the past. But the situation has changed altogether since those days. For example, one, then it was the alien British that conducted such campaigns; now it is the home army. Two, in the past, the Pakhtoons under Faqir of Ipi and, later, under Bacha Khan, opposed the British; now, the ANP, headed by the same Bacha Khan's grandson is lending its full support to the military operation. Three, the British didn't have the state-of-the art resources that are available to the Pak army now.

However, the army has only a couple of weeks' leeway to maneuver, before snowfall begins in early December. It will have then to preoccupy itself with holding the ground it has taken. The winter months are going to be a real test of its resolve. If it successfully meets that test, it will have achieved salvation.