Operation Mountain Storm
________________________________________________________________________________
March 15 2004In Karachi: "underworld mercenaries" tried to blow up the US consulate. They stole a van and loaded it with hyrdogen peroxide and left it outside the building. The van was discovered before its ignition. The attack attempt neatly coincided with the opening of America's spring offensive inside the Afghan/Pakistani tribal regions. The operation is called Mountain Storm. This is not a fight to assuage the finer feelings of UN Fred Astaires and cares nothing for appeal, like a thick kid hitting things.
Main target will be bin Laden. A more concrete target will be Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who will fight for a while or move towards ceasefire negotiations after a surprise success or so during the resistance spring offensive (penciled in for April).
Meanwhile, the US are currently sending their troops hot on the heels of Special Forces into the provinces of Nagarhar, Kandahar, Khost, the Kughan Valley, Gazni, Oruzgan, Kinduz, Logar, Nooristan and Gardez. 70,000 Pakistan troops are deployed in the tribal areas including South Waziristan, the Bajur Agency and Mohmand Agency.
It's on!
March 16The Friendliest Country in the World, Possibly the Universe.On Thursday a Taliban militia attacked a US military base 160 km east of Kabul. They fired 20 rockets which all missed and opened fire with machine guns and rifles and then fled when US marines and Special Forces engaged them. The Taliban fighters left a trail of blood as they carried their wounded and dying back to tribes and family to be formally identified.
On Saturday resistance fighters attacked a government office near the Kandahar border with rockets and machine guns and this soon descended into a gun battle which killed 6 (3 on each side).
Yesterday US troops engaged insurgents in a cave complex southwest of Zabul's provincial capital Qalat. The US arrested 5 fighters, killed 3, seized anti-coalition propaganda from the caves, and then arrested 7 more suspected Taliban from the same area.
Pakistani troops are currently fighting resistance groups in South Waziristan.
Hekmatyar has Hezb-i-Islami loyalists and mercenaries dug in the beautiful and dense jungles of the Kaghan Valley in Pakistan and the mountains of Nuristan while he directs operations from Kabul or Kunduz or somewhere else.
The Kaghan Valley is famous for fishing: apparently it has the finest river trout in the subcontinent.
Here are some animals that live in Afghanistan:
Wolf, ibex, snow leopard, hyena, jackal and lynx. Marbled polecat, rhesus monkey, sand rat. Free-tailed bat, mouse-eared bat, desert long-eared bat. Large naked-soled gerbil. Long-eared desert hedgehog. Three-toed dwarf jerboa. Ferret. Weasel. Macaw-headed cave marten. Thick-faced meadow rat. Combat gopher. Mongoose.
Vultures, all of them.
March 18>
We are not living in space and Pakistan is part of the integrated world. Says General Musharraf, and to prove his point test-fires a ballistic Shaheen-II missile.
Weeks ago resistance guerrillas and jihadis left Karachi for South and North Waziristan to fight Pakistani troops. Mission orders were dispatched by Mullah Omar via close officials (Mullah Obaidullah and Mullah Bruther) to rebel shock troops and suicide bombers. Now they're waiting for the snow to melt.
In Wana, South Waziristan, the Pakistani operation to root out militants stalled because tribal leaders refused to cooperate and even threatened war should the army go any further. Except that on Tuesday the village of Kaloosha saw the first wave of counter-insurgency and counter-counter-insurgency violence: 16 soldiers and 24 rebels were killed here including
actual al Qaedas. The army attacked a red-brick compound held by jihadis and their allied tribesmen who also shot back from nearby hills.
They were in groups. They were all around. They fired from the mountains and from houses. (Brigadier Mahmood Shah).
Military vehicles containing weapons and munitions were left burning after the battle. About 60 families fled a village of 6000.
Yesterday, somewhere in North Waziristan, rebels launched a rocket and fired at an army post killing 2 Pakistani soldiers and injuring several others. A hand grenade was thrown at an army truck bound for Miran Shah.
The US campaign has its own refinements. Instead of charging mountains with inadequate ground troops they deploy individual "search and destroy" missions made up of Special Forces, light mountain infantry, soldiers from the new Afghan National Army, marines, Navy SEAL commandos and CIA paramilitary officers delivered to specified al Qaeda and Taliban infiltrated locations by Chinooks with the close air support of fighter jets, AC-130 Spectre gunships and A-10 Warthog attack planes. This kind of operation was responsible for routing a Taliban force in Qalat on the weekend.
Meanwhile news streams in that Pakistani forces have surrounded Ayman al-Zawahiri in (or near) Wana. As long as he doesn't escape tonight then Pakistan's big guns will be going in for the kill tomorrow morning.
London is tense. An RAF Chinook flew over the City yesterday afternoon. This is
Lex Luka's account of the bone hunt. While we were busy bothering solicitors and French students the West End could have been shattered by a dirty bomb and we would have been none the wiser, it was so quiet.
March 19So they didn't just go in and kill al-Zawahiri (aka "high-value target who isn't bin Laden") after all: it seems more difficult when he's surrounded by 400 "heavily-armed militants" ready to "fight to the death" (fair play, let them) according to the
BBC. No updates there as yet, so who knows what's going on now.
Al-jazeera, in the meantime, report a Taliban threat to attack US and Pakistani troops if current operations continue, which they will. They also claim that both bin Laden and al-Zawahri are safe and sound in Afghanistan. "Muslims of the world," said a Taliban spokesman, "don't worry about them, these two guests, they are fine." Apart from that, I still don't know what's going on. Apart from: one dead guerilla turned out to be a Chechen. It seems likely that the US will, or has, sent Special Forces to the area in a covert capacity. Some more details from the
Jang Group: militants made two abortive attempts to escape the siege in jeeps and are otherwise fighting Pakistani troops from a distance of half a km with small firearms, rockets and rocket propelled grenades. Also, ISPR General Shaukat Sultan has admitted that no one actually knows who's in there, but it's bound to be someone valuable because the resistance is so fierce.
So I've just been on the blower to Musharraf and he said, "I dunno. They're all bloody Pashtuns and Punjabs. They either want to kill me or they won't speak to me."
Anyway, until I know more, here's something to keep you entertained: a series of lovely photos of the
Khagan Valley.
March 20100 Arab nationals, Chechens, Uzbecks and tribesmen have been captured by the Pakistan military while mortar and grenade attacks and rounds of AK-47 fire spew from within their enforced mud fortress. They've been fighting non-stop for
three days. Whenever the Pakistanis try to move in they are repelled by bullets and rockets from all sides. US satellites and predator drones hover above the battle scene. Helicopter gunships continue to batter the compound. It's now deemed unlikely that al-Zawahiri is inside and money is riding on a Chechen or Uzbek rebel commander who may well have fled the scene already.
Over the border, Afghan fighters claim that they prevented a group of "suspected al Qaeda" militants from crossing it to escape the full-scale US-Pakistan offensive.
Last night 100 UK Special Forces soldiers arrived in Kabul by air and then departed for an "unknown destination" in, perhaps, the North Western Frontier Province. It was either the SAS or a lot of soldiers dressed like the SAS or both. Jordan also sent 100 of its own Special Forces to infiltrate Arab militants in the South Eastern border regions of Afghanistan.
The action is centered in the North East Hindu Kush and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) for a reason: it is endgame terrain, the final front that the Islamic militants and the Taliban can hope to hold. There is no "front" as such: for the US or any modern State this is a black hole, the Vietnam moment: endless jungles and valleys and villages and mountains and tribes with incomprehensible languages, dialects, alliances and feuds.
The resistance tactic is to enmesh massive military machines in an hostile landscape that is their home territory and packed with potential allies and recruits. Then engage the enemy in small but exhausting clashes that slowly distance and dissipate their original objective. The NWFP remained unconquered by Kushans, Persians, Huns, Arabs, Mongols, Mughals and the British and remains outside the authority of Pakistan. No external force has ever won there.
Nevertheless, the US managed to assemble a proxy network within the region before Mountain Storm commenced last week: anti-Taliban tribes that had been cultivated and bribed by the CIA and Special Forces. Similarly, the Pakistan military helped assemble a tribal
lashkar in South Waziristan. The US proxies are now mostly dispersed and the ad hoc tribal army surrendered when 600 of its number where taken hostage by the Islamist militants last Tuesday.
March 24Pepe "Nas" Escobar gets in quick smart to
explain what
actually happened last week in South Waziristan. Go Pepe!
For a start, in a moment of inconceivable folly, the whole world got tied up in the "web of conceit" spun by Musharraf. Which is to say: the al-Zawahiri story did circulate for a day and was exciting for a day. Indeed, over here, it lasted all of Thursday night, which I slept through. But, if I’d been a national press editor, I would have run the story with every grim detail plus a few under this headline:
Al-Zawahiri’s Last Stand! Grim Guru Cornered as War on Terror Explodes in Mujahideen Badlands.
I'll mention this, but not in mitigation:
The take-over of time by 24 hour news has replaced proportion or judgment with the continuous relay of events and the subsequent slurry of accusation and opinion. The time-delay necessary for analysis does not exist. The parade of undigested bulletins and "reports" leads, generally, to confusion and disinformation. Pause and reflection is lost in expectation and the accretion of "developments". News "breaks" and that is all.
Keeping up with the "stand-off near Wana" last week was a bit like that: grabbing snippets of info and fact and piecing them all together in loose association and then adding narrative momentum and a dash of melodrama. Actually, in the event, there’s nothing more dramatic than reality.
When I woke up al-Zawahiri was still alive. Worse: it was quite clear that al-Zawahiri had never even been in the compound. Then a lot of rumours shook loose: It’s Uzbecks! It’s Chechens! It’s Gauls! It’s not even a compound! Musharraf’s apparent propaganda trap had gained international media cache but had then ignominiously collapsed, the storyline undercut by the chaos of unfolding events. Things got breathless and the plot seized. I didn’t think anybody anywhere knew anything. I was wrong.
Pepe did!
Pepe rolls with local sources who revealed the true identity of the "high-value" target: Tahir Yuldash, head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, flanked by the Chechen commander, Danyar. But Yaldash had escaped the siege early on in "a black, bullet-proof Toyota land-cruiser with tinted windows" (stylish). He had organised the Central Asian jihadi presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, coordinating Uzbecks, Chechens, Tajiks and Uighers (from Xinjang), which
did make him a fairly high value target after all. Except he'd escaped. If he'd even been there.
The operation was far broader than the siege that became its main media focus. Mujahideens fought the army in eight other villages around Wana and Azam Warsack. Pakistani hardware (including Cobra helicopters and F-17s) battered the region with missiles and artillery spurring mass evacuations and causing numerous civilian casualties. Roads were blockaded and electricity cut off.
Plus a lot of other stuff that happened, or didn't.
Scene 2:
