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

1 Frontline Pakistan
It was not only ideological bonds and sympathy that helped al-
Qaeda fugitives buy the support of the tribesmen, but also money
– the people were poor and easily lured by it. In an area where there
was no other employment, the influx of al-Qaeda money was just
one more way by which tribesmen gained influence. 16 bin Laden’s
men distributed millions of dollars among the tribal elders in return
for shelter. Local fighters, enlisted by al-Qaeda, received up to $250
each as monthly wages, many times more than the monthly wages of a
government soldier. 17 The militant commanders used to get advances
for their services running into millions. The residents also received
huge monetary benefits by renting out their compounds for shelter
and training camps. Most of the al-Qaeda funds came through illegal
and informal channels from Arab countries. While the tribesmen
were familiar with the art of resistance, they had also learnt the art of
extortion from outsiders who tried to buy them. 18
The Pakistani security forces launched an offensive against the
militants in the second week of March 2004, once the deadline for
the tribesmen to hand over foreign fighters had expired. The military
authorities had boasted that the operation would be over in a couple
of days, but the intensity of the fighting shocked the Pakistani army
commanders. The army suffered heavy casualties in the 12 days of
bloody fighting. On 16 March, at least 50 soldiers were killed and
many others captured by the tribesmen and their foreign guests
when they raided militant hideouts. 19 The fiercest battles took place
in Kaloosha and Shin Warsak, where scores of suspected al-Qaeda
fighters had lived under the protection of local militants. Finding
themselves surrounded, scores of paramilitary troops threw away their
weapons and fled for their lives. ‘Many soldiers took shelter inside a
mosque when they came under fire,’ Ehsan Wazir, a local resident,
told me when I went to Kaloosha a few weeks later. ‘Among them was
a colonel who came out with the Qur’an on his head begging for his
life. He was let go after the tribesmen stripped off his uniform.’
It was a no-win situation for the government forces They could not
abandon the operation halfway and had to use bombers and gunship
helicopters against what was earlier described as a ‘handful of foreign
militants and some local miscreants’. Among the foreign militants,
mostly from Uzbekistan and Chechnya who had taken shelter in the
area, was Tahir Yaldashev. The militant leader had become the head
of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) after its founder, Juma
Namangani, was killed in the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan