Pakistan army sure it has upper hand in tribal areas

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From his office less than 100m from where that melancholy grafittist left his mark, the man who leads the 50,000-strong Frontier Corps on the front lines of Pakistan's war on terror believes that time is near.

Major General Tariq Khan says the Frontier Corps is just two months away from flushing Islamic militants from all but one of the country's tribal agencies - North Waziristan - and once again bringing the country's western border with Afghanistan under government control.

It is a bold security assessment of a 1200km land strip that has become a redoubt for some of the world's most dangerous Islamic extremists. Even more so given Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, admits that one of Afghanistan's most feared militants, the Taliban-allied Afghan fighter Jalaluddin Haqqani, continues to spend up to 15 days each month in North Waziristan."There are no roads not open to us, no villages not accessible to us," General Khan boasts. "It makes me very happy to say that out of seven agencies, four of them we have total writ over. We're just waiting for the major operations - like Orakzai and Khyber - to finish in a couple of months to spare us the troops to start changing our methodology."

When that happens, the Frontier Corps - traditional defenders of the western border for more than 150 years - will conduct operations across the Federally Administered Tribal Area, going house to house in search of weapons caches and the remnants of the Pakistani Taliban leadership.

If it is true that Pakistan has finally turned the hose on the Islamic militants who have in the past found safety and even state support in FATA - and there is still scepticism it has - it could prove decisive for NATO and US forces fighting a Taliban insurgency across the border in Afghanistan.

The US has consistently accused Pakistan of playing a double game in the war on terror, co-operating with Western powers to rout Taliban forces while covertly supporting Afghan extremists in FATA to maintain leverage after the US pull-out.

Militant commanders such as Haqqani have long been regarded as a "Pakistani asset" (although the military is preparing to launch an operation in North Waziristan.) But US rhetoric has changed markedly in recent months as the Pakistani military has made material gains in FATA and Swat and arrested several high-profile Afghan Taliban leaders, even as the ISI has reportedly let others go.

"You have to give them a lot of credit for what they have done," one senior US official said of the Pakistani military this week. "They definitely are shrinking the safe havens inside Pakistan."

Yet in recent days General Khan has publicly criticised NATO and the US for failing to act on recent Pakistani intelligence that militants are escaping over the border into Afghanistan.

"At a tactical level, we have a very close relationship (with NATO and the US) but we're all governed by our own rules of engagement and in Afghanistan the rules of engagement are not allowing those people to operate the way they were operating," the straight-talking general says.

"I don't blame them (NATO troops). They're as frustrated as we are."

Civilian deaths in Afghanistan have forced NATO into accepting new rules that forbid troops from firing on an unarmed person, which means militants only have to drop their weapons and they may move away unhindered.

With the Pakistan military in the ascendant in its own backyard, General Khan believes his troops have succeeded where the better-equipped NATO and the US have so far failed.

"When I took command in August 2008, the Khyber Road was threatened, Peshawar and the surrounding areas had 50 kidnappings for ransom a day, Buner was occupied, the motorway (into Islamabad) was threatened," he says.

"Swat had its own constitution, Bajaur was days away from declaring allegiance to Afghanistan, Mohmand was a no-go area and Waziristan" was the acknowledged headquarters for Taliban insurgents.

"What's the situation now? The road to Kabul is open. Bajaur is secure. In all agencies bar one, we have the writ of the government."

In recent weeks, the Frontier Corps has spruiked its victories by flying journalists out to Damadola, in Bajaur Agency, to tour a complex of 156 caves developed by militants over seven years, within clear view of eastern Afghanistan. The area was the headquarters of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban and the home of al-Qa'ida No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri until a failed drone attack in 2006 forced him to flee the area.

The Frontier Corps's victories have not come without US help, however. More than $US100 million in US aid has been spent in the past five years to help convert the corps from an under-resourced law enforcement agency struggling with mass desertions into a disciplined counter-insurgency force. Annual salaries have increased more than fourfold, and weapons, military infrastructure and living conditions have all improved significantly.

US Special Operations trainers, several of whom were seen by The Weekend Australian at Bala Hisar, now work with the corps to set up infrastructure in liberated areas, including tube wells, medical camps and FM radio stations with a dial-up network that villagers can use like a 000 or 911 emergency system.

Khadim Hussain from the independent Pakistani think tank Ariana Institute says many Pakistanis remain sceptical of military victory declarations they have heard many times before.

"Pakistanis generally are not yet clear as to what the military establishment is up to with respect to dealing with non-state actors and militant Islamic forces," he said. "The Taliban network, and its leadership, is still intact and still capable of launching strikes across Pakistan."

General Khan agrees the key to long-term stability in FATA is ensuring the support of the people there. Across most of the tribal areas he insists his troops - who are recruited from within the tribal agency itself - are greeted as liberators from the misery of life under Taliban rule.

But that is not universally the case. The military has faced heavy criticism for causing civilian deaths during operations and this week the army was forced into a rare admission over one of the most serious incidences yet in the Tyrah Valley in the Khyber Agency. About 57 people were killed in an aerial attack that was thought to be targeting a militant hideout but in fact hit the home of a tribal elder sympathetic to the government.

General Khan concedes such incidents do not help Pakistan win over the famed and feared FATA tribes, and appears to hold similar views on the US unmanned drones, used to devastating effect over the past 18 months to target militants, including the late Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

"We have to take the people with us. There's no other way."

General Khan says $1 billion is needed to rehabilitate the tribal areas, to ensure Taliban forces do not return to fill the vacuum.

If that occurs, then the FATA will no longer pose a threat to the country's stability, regardless of what happens over the border.