The situation in the tribal areas is getting worse by the day. For proof, in a recent interview published by the Swiss daily Le Temps, Rashid Shah, a Taliban leader in Pakistan's north-west region of Waziristan, stated:
"It is impossible to stop us. We have spies all along the border who tell us about the U.S. patrols. We also have spies inside their military bases. As soon as an operation is in the works, we know about it. Most of the time we immediately take off to attack the convoys.
"We don't need money," he continued. "We have some. The population directly finances our war effort. And we also get grants from countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They give money to our Koranic schools. Lots of money; which allows us to buy weapons. What we want is to liberate Afghanistan from Americans. And then we will liberate our country of pro-U.S. governments, such as Musharraf's."
Most of the fighting is left to the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary group created during the British era. They are Pashtun militias responsible for protecting the border area where the Pakistani army was historically forbidden. In 2004, the United States asked them to deploy against the Islamist fighters holed up in the zone.
But the corps does not seriously fight the Taliban. Testimonies of Frontier Corps troops reveal that insurgents freely cross the border to fight the jihad in Afghanistan and return without hindrance. Furthermore, the populations house and feed them. Numerous locals actually join the underground. Also, Pakistani soldiers sometimes provide medical treatment when they return injured.
Some Frontier Corps fighters say that the army could finish off the Taliban in one day if it wanted to, but that the military commanders do not give the order to do so. Instead, they tell the troops that killing locals would create problems all over the country.
Quetta city, in north-western Pakistan, is a haven for the Taliban, whose fighters who get injured in clashes with NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan are treated in hospitals there.
But that is not all. Youngsters are recruited in droves to go and fight in Afghanistan. In fact, the local youth is still very much drawn by the networks of combatants. Stories of young men in their teens being sent to Afghanistan by neighborhood mullahs who manage madrassas, or Koranic schools, are aplenty. These mullahs give money to youngsters to go and fight. Throughout the region, mullahs are urging young men to take up arms, telling them to liberate Afghanistan from the occupation of the infidels who want to exterminate all Muslims in the world. The young men are taught that they will go to heaven if they are killed in combat.
If all this was not bad enough, ex-Taliban leaders that defected are underlining Islamabad's link -- in particular Pakistan's intelligence services, the ISI -- to the Taliban. "From the start, the Taliban has been under Islamabad's control," one Taliban defector has said, and: "When the ISI arrests a Taliban leader, it is often because the latter does not want to fight anymore."
Appeasing the Taliban did not help Musharraf, where they seem to be gaining ground. The fact that they could assassinate Bhutto so easily is indeed a worrying sign.
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Olivier Guitta is a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant in Washington D.C. and the founder of the newsletter The Croissant. (www.thecroissant.com)