U.S. defense officials announced Oct. 4 that Pakistan has sufficient forces and equipment in place to launch a ground offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan. This announcement came after Pakistani military officials said Oct. 1 that, after four months of preparations, the military would be ready to begin its campaign in South Waziristan. The time and statements that have led to this moment indicate that considerable military and political effort has gone into devising a strategy and preparing for an offensive in what has become a sanctuary for Islamist militants in Pakistan.

Analysis

U.S. defense officials said Oct. 4 that Pakistan has enough forces and equipment in place to launch a ground offensive against Islamist militants in South Waziristan in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) — rhetoric designed to make sure the Pakistanis follow through with a robust operation. The Pakistanis have also touted the coming offensive; on Oct. 1, Pakistani military officials said that after four months of preparations, the military is ready to begin its campaign in South Waziristan.

Two divisions of Pakistani soldiers — totaling approximately 28,000 — are prepared to begin a full-scale ground offensive in South Waziristan. Most are based at FR Bannu, a base camp northeast of South Waziristan. Many of the soldiers likely are in the cleared areas within South Waziristan and will have close-air support from the Pakistani air force. These soldiers will face between 12,000 and 15,000 members of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other foreign Islamist fighters, the largest and most capable contingent being from Uzbekistan.

The last time the Pakistani military tried to mount a serious ground offensive in South Waziristan was in March 2004. In that campaign (which only lasted 12 days), Pakistan deployed 7,500 troops; 62 were killed and 12 were abducted. This was the Pakistani army’s first campaign in the tribal belt and was seen largely as a failure. At that time, the Pakistani army was trained to fight a conventional war with India, not a counterinsurgency operation in its own country, and was not prepared for Islamist militants (many of whom were trained by the Pakistani state) to turn against the government.

There are key differences between the Pakistani army’s upcoming campaign and its last attempt. This time around, the Pakistani military will be going into South Waziristan with nearly four times more troops, more preparation and the benefit of having learned lessons from the 2004 campaign. This campaign has been in the works since June, when the Pakistani military, coming off of a successful campaign against militants in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), began to launch attack helicopter and artillery strikes against militant positions in South Waziristan in an effort to soften up enemy positions in the area.

The Pakistani air force has been conducting air strikes using fixed-wing aircraft against enemy positions in South Waziristan while unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes believed to have been launched by the United States have killed two high-level militant leaders in the past month and dozens of other militants over the past several months. The de facto leader of the TTP, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed Aug. 5 in an apparent U.S. UAV strike; then on Aug.27, another UAV strike fatally wounded Uzbek commander Tahir Yuldashev. These two men commanded a large contingent of both local and foreign fighters operating along the Afghan/Pakistani border. Their deaths have opened rifts among the group’s leaders and spawned infighting, which makes the TTP more vulnerable to Pakistani military offensives.

Al Qaeda is still active in the region, but it is far smaller than it used to be in terms of manpower (and far smaller than the TTP) and has suffered its share of setbacks. Furthermore, al Qaeda is a terrorist group that employs terrorist tactics; it can conduct diversionary attacks to keep the military off balance, but it is not a militia that can field large numbers of fighters to assist the TTP.

After the anticipated ground campaign, militants in South Waziristan could either call in reinforcements from areas such as Khyber or Orakzai or flee South Waziristan, especially toward the northern rim of the tribal belt, and create sanctuaries elsewhere. Pakistan has used the past four months to very publicly prepare for this operation, and the militants in South Waziristan have certainly taken notice and made their own preparations. However, through tribal alliances and military outposts, the Pakistani army has created a posture that will hinder militants’ efforts to either migrate to another region or muster reinforcements from outside South Waziristan. There will be allied tribal commanders in western Waziristan along the Afghan border and military forces south of Waziristan in Balochistan. To the east, Pakistani forces will be stationed in the NWFP districts and frontier regions of Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Lakki Marwat and Bannu and the districts of Karak and Hangu.

A potential hole in Pakistan’s military perimeter is in North Waziristan, home of militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur. Bahadur has occasionally antagonized Islamabad, making and breaking peace agreements over the years. He could choose to help the militants in South Waziristan. Furthermore, North Waziristan is also the Pakistani hub of the Haqqani network, named after the prominent Afghan Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose group is powerful in the provinces of eastern Afghanistan. Pakistan will need cooperation from the Haqqani network in order to succeed against the TTP. But this could create problems with the United States since the Haqqanis have begun escalating attacks in eastern Afghanistan — likely in response to drone strikes in Waziristan and in order to exploit the fact that Washington and its allies are mired in an internal debate over a strategy for Afghanistan.

Finally, the FATA is a region with complex political dynamics and far more autonomy than any other region of Pakistan. FATA is not designed to be under the firm political or military control of Islamabad, so the Pakistani forces will have to rely a great deal on local allies to administer the territory and give its operational gains staying power if the military operation uproots the TTP’s presence. Unlike the local militias, which have very localized interests, the power brokers in the FATA have interests in both Afghanistan and Pakistan — a situation that could create even more tension between the Pakistanis and Americans. Pakistan’s military operation in Swat earlier in 2009 was an internal affair with plenty of difficulties, but the campaign in South Waziristan will have transnational implications, greatly raising the complexity of the mission.

Simply because Pakistan appears to be mounting a serious campaign against militants in South Waziristan does not mean that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan will necessarily benefit. Pakistan will pursue its own interests in this mission, and that means pursuing militants that are focused on carrying out attacks against Pakistan — including al Qaeda. The Pakistani nationals who support the Taliban on the other side of the border are not as much of a concern to the Pakistanis and so they are unlikely to be directly targeted — meaning they will still be able to undermine the U.S. operation in Afghanistan.

It seems clear that Islamabad has learned from at least some aspects of its failure in South Waziristan in 2004. The scale of the planned operation, as well as the U.S. vote of confidence, is noteworthy. However, as with efforts in Swat and elsewhere, the real challenge is not simply rooting out Taliban elements, but creating conditions that support more sustainable political and security circumstances amenable to Islamabad — which in Waziristan will be an exponentially more daunting task than in Swat.

This article is published at Lebanonwire by agreement with www.stratfor.com, the world's leading private intelligence provider.

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