Caught In The Crossfire? Tough Luck, Wazirastani

It used to be fun to live in Mir Ali, North Waziristan. Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were the honored "guests," beneficiaries of tribal "hospitality."

The locals probably had a good time watching as the fighters kidnapped, killed, and decapitated Pakistani soldiers. The Geek can picture it all in his mind's eye.

AK's popping off in the air. Loud shouts of praise to the "Compassionate and Merciful." The smell of burning bodies mixing with the fragrances of dinner cooking. The cool mountain air invigorating all hands at the joyous assembly marking another victory over the apostates.

Terror is so much fun!

There was one little problem. One little wrinkle that the Talibanistas, the al-Qaedaites, and the hospitable local folks overlooked.

Soldiers do not appreciate being shot at, kidnapped, killed. They sure don't like to find the bodies of their comrades, headless and burned, dropped off alongside some mountain track.

More than that, soldiers, even less than civilians, are likely to be "terrorised" by the acts of terrorists. A bunch of spoilsports, the Pakistani army forces in the area finally had had enough.

It is true that morale among the Pakistani units fell for a substantial period of time. There were credible indications of demoralisation hitting such a level that entire units either surrendered, or deserted.

If the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership in the area possessed as many brains as the local sheep, they would have stopped the terror attacks as demoralisation set in. That would have been the intelligent course of action. After all, the goal had been the removal of Pakistani forces from North Waziristan, if not all seven Tribal Agencies.

Did they stop when the stopping was good?

Nope.

They kept at it, apparently believing that if a little terror was good, a lot of terror was better.

They forgot a basic principle of warfare--both conventional and unconventional. Pressure consolidates long before it fractures. The will to combat is increased, not decreased, if pressure of a non-destructive sort is continued.

The crossover point was reached when the blackhats hit a Pakistani army convoy. The Paks stopped hunkering down, going through the motions, playing the role of Graves Registration for more and more throat-slit or decapitated or burned bodies of other soldiers.

Now the Pakistani Army lashed back. The Taliban and al-Qaeda guerrillas found out that firepower kills. It kills just as certainly if it comes from a Pakistani artillery piece, helicopter gunship, or fighter-bomber as it does when coming from a US or NATO equivalent.

To put the matter short and not at all sweetly, the Paks greased the hilltops. They killed combatants and civilians alike.

The villagers of Mir Ali discovered quickly that being hospitable brought risks--and consequences. Heavy shells, rockets, bombs, and machine cannon rounds don't distinguish between civilians and combatants. They do not see the difference between a rock hut in which women and children huddle from the rock hut sheltering gunslingers.

Islam online reports the inevitable whining from displaced villagers running from the retaliation of the Pakistani army. http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1190886271778&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout. The article paints the fleeing villagers as unfortunate individuals caught between the rock of Taliban/al-Qaeda and the hard place of the Pakistani army.

Get a grip!

The villagers of North Waziristan (and the other Tribal Agencies) have hosted the guerrillas. They have provided cover and concealment in their own homes for the blackhats. The "helpless" villagers have provided support, intelligence information, and other forms of direct military assistance to their guests.

The same villagers shouted, shot, and danced their joy whenever the militants killed, kidnapped, and mutilated. The enemy of their friends was their enemy too.

Now that the enemy (the Pakistani armed forces) is striking back, life is not so much fun. Constant tales of civilian misery find sympathetic media ears. One example is the al-Jazeera English language service which is often a surprisingly well balanced outlet. Seehttp://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FAD67AB0-C78A-4F3B-BF2A-97A7D8588E94.htm.

Al-Jazeera quotes show a refrain familiar to anyone who has experience in counterinsurgency. Reduced to its universal essentials, the statement made by a refugee from any village, anywhere, during any insurgency is this, "There were no guerrillas in our village. There were just us innocent civilians."

It used to strike the Geek (and still does) as a sentiment identical with what American GI's heard in Germany at the end of WW II. "I wasn't a Nazi. I didn't know any Nazis. No Nazis really, really lived in this village."

In Pakistan, the stories of horror passed by refugees finds a ready media reception which is not surprising given the current political instability in Pakistan. The (English language) News online edition takes a carefully anti-military line in its coverage. It's worth close examination for its framing, http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=10587.

The writers, Mushtaq Yusufzai and Haji Yaseen, make the unsurprising observation that the civilians "have suffered the most from the ongoing violence in Mir Ali." It's unsurprising simply because that is the way of war.

Not just modern war, particularly counterinsurgency operations of the past fifty years, as some have alleged. No. It was true of most wars at most times throughout history. With the exception of the limited and rather inconclusive wars that dotted Europe between the end of the hideously destructive Thirty Years War and the commencement of the Wars of the French Revolution, the foot of war has crushed far more civilians than it has soldiers.

The hard realities of guerrilla insurgency assure that civilians will suffer under the harrow of war. This is particularly true with situations such as that existing in North Waziristan.

In a real, albeit painful, sense the villagers of Mir Ali and other hamlets in the mountains asked for what they are now receiving. When they allowed the Taliban and al-Qaeda combatants to bunk down in their midst, they invited inevitable retaliation.

Perhaps, at least some of the villagers knew this. If so, they didn't act on the knowledge. Now, after the fact of the Pakistani armed forces attacks, the locals will have plentiful excuses as to why they permitted the combatants to stay or why they didn't assist the government forces to eject the unwelcome guests or why they didn't leave the area before the bang-bang started.

That's the way it has always been. As long as the guerrillas are ideologically sympathetic, or as long as they are winning, the local peasants are the loyal cheering section, the providers of shelter, supplies, and information.

Then, when the situation changes, when the bombs fall and bullets whine, it was all a mistake. The government is wrong, inhuman, the tool of foreign oppressors. There was no one here but us peace-loving peasants. Really! Trust us! We're the victims here.

The Geek understands this reaction. It's never enjoyable when the party's over. When its raided by the cops. So it is in North Waziristan.

As long as no one is taken in by the act, no harm is done. As long as we in the US and the West don't fall over from the propaganda winds generated by sympathetic media, its all business as usual in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

For decades, generations, armies both conventional and not have marched, counter-marched, fought and bled over the rocky roads to nowhere in particular. All the while, it has been the civilians who take the heaviest losses.