Taimi bhai,
1) You are not far away .... in fact your regular updates (with numbers
) show that you are exceptionally well informed
2) It is not
my inference ..... it is what many people are already saying .... and the concern is evident. Have referred to it in an earlier post as well.
PA has only covered or neutralized a tip of the iceberg ..... in terms of Taliban fighters.
Not hideouts. Not weapons caches. Not ammunition. Not food reserves.
Live (or wounded or dead) Taliban.
Numbers such as 20,000 hardcore veteran Taliban were being thrown about ..... on this very thread.
How many of these have been taken out.
Where have the rest gone.
Wherever they have gone, regardless of the advances and progress made by your PA, arent those that have slipped through not a concern?
That is what I am trying to get at. Would appreciate your comments.
Cheers, Doc
Thank U Sir for your nice comments, am flattered
Anyway, i don't know who gave the 20,000 figure, but i remember very well DG ISPR giving away an approx 10,000 figure on the higher side, the ones who may be there in the triangle where the operation has been launched. If we add the figure of other areas, it may well go up pretty high.
So in 10,000 figure, the composition is not known well enough, 1000+ roughly are said to be the uzbeks, chechans etc. So the number of local militant again comes down, now in that figure as i said before the hardcore & non-hardcore elements are difficult to identify. Taking the example of Swat, the figure of 5,000 used to be quoted in which the hardcore fanatics were expected to be around 1500-2000, rest were the ones recruited forcibly, the criminal elements and the ones who joined for the thrill of it out of may be poverty as pretty good amount of money was being given to the foot soldiers. So when the offensive started, majority ran away and the hardcore one gave a fight and the left ones are being hunted down.
Coming back to SW, agree that its just the tip of the iceberg, things have just started now, its not the end. As said before the militants were ready for the offensive but after seeing their major places being captured with unusual tactics used by PA, they gave way and except for giving some hard fight in few places, they ran away in majority of places leaving behind a lot of weapons, the ones being shown in TV or in pics are not just that, much more then this is to be seen and yet found, as i said the militants were willing for a face to face fight so they did not shifted their hard earned weapons to safer places for the guerrilla fight as they now bark about, if they had that plan then believe me we would have not found such huge weapons rather just small weapons would have been found.
As for where they are, majority of them are still in the triangle where the fighting is taking place, as their major stronghold were being taken over by PA, they have moved to the places, villages where PA still has to come, if you get time do look at the area through google earth, you will find so many areas with few dozen of houses built and scattered through out the region. They have moved there either waiting for winter to start and hope PA doesn't comes and they try to get regroup and start their guerrilla war in the spring, some may have even left the region and gone to NW or other agencies nearby but if a large number had even moved out we should have seen something happening in their new area of refugee as they must have done something to help ease the pressure on their brothers left to face off with PA, but the lack of any major activity by them in any other area may suggest that they haven't left in huge numbers out of this area but are in that same area and waiting for either PA to move out and start the search & clearance operations which the recent news of fierce engagements happening do suggest. The operational area so far has clear line of communication with roads making reach of PA easily accessible, but real fight will be seen when PA moves out on foot using foot trails and reaching far flung villages and mountain regions where only by foot people can go. And the militants now know that if PA can take the fight to SW to their most safest strongholds where they had prepared for years to fight off PA, then PA can come to any other new place of their refuge too as they don't have much of area left to take refuge in.
And now for your most important part, in one of my recent discussions with someone, I asked the same question and i was told that intelligence guys believe that in the
past few months since the siege began and in this phase of operation the rough figure of dead & wounded figure of militants combining all the causes comes to between 1000-1500, and their total numbers in recent months got reduced also due to some defections, group wise and individual wise.
