Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

War Comes Home
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border; he had to protect his eastern borders. Tora Bora fell three days
later on 16 December. By that time, hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters had
escaped into Pakistan, including many senior leaders. Many of them
made their escape bribing Afghan warlords. 5 They journeyed through
twisting mountainous passes – trails with a long history of smuggling
– that linked eastern Afghanistan with Pakistan’s lawless tribal region
and melted in among sympathetic locals. At some places, particularly
in the Tirah valley, the daunting mountains rose up to 10,000 feet,
making the job of the Pakistani security forces extremely difficult.
In many cases, the soldiers looked the other way as foreign fighters
crossed over to the Pakistani side and many in the ISI arranged safe
passage for the fugitives. Then there was the question of legality. The
lawless tribal regions were beyond Islamabad’s rule. The government’s
writ only ran along the main roads, therefore security forces could
not set up checkpoints on unfrequented routes. Pakistani intelligence
agencies did not have any effective network there to check the
movement of foreign fighters. Fearing an internal political backlash,
Musharraf was also reluctant to go the whole hog to pursue the
militants. He was not willing to launch large-scale military operations
against al-Qaeda, while most of his troops were massed along the
Indian border due to tensions over Kashmir.
The expansion of the war into Pakistan carried the risk of increasing
political unrest, particularly when Musharraf’s support for the United
States had sparked considerable opposition from Islamic political
parties. Anti-American and pro-bin Laden sentiments had run high
in the North West Frontier Province in the immediate aftermath of
the routing of Taliban rule. The increasing hostility of the local
population had made the situation even more difficult for the security
forces searching for al-Qaeda fugitives. Reports of the presence of
US personnel in the border areas gave the situation an explosive
twist. Covert US military units had been conducting reconnaissance
operations inside Pakistan and had participated in raids on suspected
al-Qaeda hideouts in the border region. 6 American forces had not only
been active in Paktia and Paktika provinces in Afghanistan, but also in
adjacent tribal areas in Pakistan where the government in Islamabad
had only a limited writ. US operations on its territory had made the
Pakistani government nervous and it wanted Washington to keep a
low profile on the issue, which had also involved the presence of
American warplanes, special operation troops and regular forces at
four Pakistani bases. Islamic radical leaders threatened to intensify