Pakistan unleashes an assault on militants

What happened

Some 28,000 Pakistani troops surged into the rugged terrain of South Waziristan this week, on a mission to crush al Qaida and Taliban militants following a wave of bloody attacks on Pakistan’s government and civilians. With fighter jets pounding the terrorists’ mountain hideouts, ground troops engaged militants in gun battles, fighting village to village in an assault culminating in a pitched battle for the town of Kotkai—unfolding as The Week went to press. Kotkai is the hometown of Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of Tehrik-i-Taliban, the group thought to be behind the terrorist attacks that killed at least 150 people in the past week alone. The resolve and reach of the militants was underscored this week when two suicide bombers killed five people at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, prompting authorities to close all government-run schools.

The U.S. has long been urging Pakistan to take control of South Waziristan, where many Islamist fighters—likely including Osama bin Laden—have taken refuge from the U.S.-led operations in neighboring Afghanistan. Although previous crackdowns have faltered, in part due to resistance from Islamist elements within Pakistan’s military, recent polls show unprecedented public support for the offensive.

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What the editorials said

“Finally,” said USA Today. For all the hand-wringing over U.S. policy in Afghanistan, everyone knows that the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks have most likely been hiding in the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Our ally Pakistan has mostly looked the other way. But in the wake of the recent terror attacks, the Pakistanis are approaching this crackdown with “new vigor,” and it could actually succeed. That would not only be a huge boon for the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, it could end “Osama bin Laden’s eight years on the run.”

Pakistan’s offensive reminds us that you “can’t pick and choose which terrorists to fight,” said Investor’s Business Daily. For years, the Pakistanis—like many in the Obama administration today—deluded themselves into thinking that the Taliban and al Qaida were different entities, and that they could get away with making war only against the latter. Not so. These are “one and the same enemy,” huddled together in a deadly “rat’s nest of Islamofascist terrorist activity.” As the rats flee back into Afghanistan, the U.S. must be ready for them—with sufficient resolve as well as troops.

What the columnists said

This crackdown may look like the real thing, said Dean Nelson in the London Daily Telegraph. But there is still “deep reluctance” within the Pakistani military about the prospect of killing “thousands of their own countrymen.” The nation’s leaders are in an impossible situation. The violence emanating from Waziristan demands a response, but that response will only enrage the Islamist communities in Pakistan’s towns and cities, raising the likelihood of a “national explosion.” The training camps of Waziristan are the “principal sources of terrorist threat to democracies” around the world, said Salim Mansur in The Toronto Sun. But it’s unlikely that Pakistan’s leaders will unleash the “military steamroller” necessary to tame it.

Even if they do, said David Pryce-Jones in National Review Online, there are countless graduates of those training camps poised to strike around the world, from Europe, to the United Kingdom, to the United States. “Just a few of such types are enough to wreak havoc,” and Pakistan’s offensive could be just the trigger they’ve been waiting for. “The more successful the Pakistan army is in Waziristan,” the more likely we are to face attacks in the streets of our own cities.

That’s why we’ll never curb the terrorist threat by military might alone, said Shuja Nawaz in The Wall Street Journal. A successful military operation in Waziristan would achieve, at most, “a respite from the violence.” Poor, desperate people are easy recruits for Islamist militants, and millions of Pakistanis are illiterate, unemployed, and mired in hopelessness. The elected government in Pakistan has long played second fiddle to the military, but this is one war that can only be won by civilians.