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

8
the tribal
warriors
P akistani soldiers had dug into stone bunkers on a strategic
mountaintop, close to the Afghan border, while gunship helicopters
hovered over a village down in the valley. The boom of artillery fire
echoed in the distance as troops tried to flush out suspected al-Qaeda
fighters holed up in a mud compound. Pointing his baton towards
the arid hill on the horizon where his soldiers had advanced, Major-
General Niaz Khattak boasted: ‘It is only a matter of time before the
entire South Waziristan region will be cleared of terrorists.’ A short
man with a greying thick moustache, the commanding officer, a
Pashtun from the North West Frontier Province, was visibly pleased
with the performance of his men as he stood on the windy escarpment
of Karwana Manzai, shortly after it was captured from rebel control.
One of the villages captured by General Khattak’s troops was Nano,
the home of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, Abdullah Mehsud. The
one-legged, 29-year-old rebel commander had risen to prominence
after masterminding some spectacular guerrilla attacks on Pakistani
troops. Abdullah, whose real name was Noor Alam, had fought for
the Taliban before he was captured by the US coalition forces in
Afghanistan in December 2001. A member of the Mehsud tribe that
inhabited South Waziristan, he had joined the rebels after he was freed