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The Battle for Bajaur - PA seizes control

Pakistan aided Isaf in attack on its soil’

By Arshad Sharif

ISLAMABAD, Nov 17: The Pakistan military helped the western forces based in Afghanistan attack a position in Pakistan used by militants after an Isaf post was hit by two rockets fired allegedly by militants from inside Pakistan.

According to a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, militants pounded an Isaf base in Paktika on Sunday, leading to the coordinated artillery strike into Pakistan.

Following the second attack, Isaf soldiers were able to identify the origin of the enemy rocket launches. The Isaf then got into touch with the Pakistan military and fired a barrage of 20 artillery rounds on the suspected target, the spokesman said.

The artillery fire caused a secondary explosion at the rocket launch site “indicating that there were additional munitions in the location”, the Isaf said.

The Isaf and Pakistani soldiers observed the shelling, the spokesman added..

After the incident, Pakistan assured Isaf that it would try to “engage militants attempting to flee deeper into Pakistan”. The Isaf suffered no casualties.
 

KHAR: Three tribal elders on Tuesday escaped from Taliban captivity in Bajaur Agency, claiming presence of a large number of foreigners in the Taliban ranks. Malak Bakht Munir and two other tribal elders told reporters that the foreigners included Chechens and Uzbek, Tajik, Sudanese and Afghan nationals. The Taliban kidnapped seven elders of a Mamoond tribal lashkar on Monday. Munir said their hands and legs were tied with chains and they were led blindfolded to a house. “The Taliban were warning us that we will be beheaded in a day or two,” he said. hasbanullah khan
 

KHAR: Three tribal elders on Tuesday escaped from Taliban captivity in Bajaur Agency, claiming presence of a large number of foreigners in the Taliban ranks. Malak Bakht Munir and two other tribal elders told reporters that the foreigners included Chechens and Uzbek, Tajik, Sudanese and Afghan nationals. The Taliban kidnapped seven elders of a Mamoond tribal lashkar on Monday. Munir said their hands and legs were tied with chains and they were led blindfolded to a house. “The Taliban were warning us that we will be beheaded in a day or two,” he said. hasbanullah khan


Neo this is nothing new, infact this is what Pakistan has been harping on about for the pat year or so that most of the militants are not home grown, infact majority are battle hardened terrorists from foreign countries.
 
but what happened to the ARabs who were staying away from teh fight last year, and teh group of uzbeks that were helping the army??? or was that just rumour?
 
Pakistan aided Isaf in attack on its soil’

By Arshad Sharif

ISLAMABAD, Nov 17: The Pakistan military helped the western forces based in Afghanistan attack a position in Pakistan used by militants after an Isaf post was hit by two rockets fired allegedly by militants from inside Pakistan.

According to a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, militants pounded an Isaf base in Paktika on Sunday, leading to the coordinated artillery strike into Pakistan.

Following the second attack, Isaf soldiers were able to identify the origin of the enemy rocket launches. The Isaf then got into touch with the Pakistan military and fired a barrage of 20 artillery rounds on the suspected target, the spokesman said.

The artillery fire caused a secondary explosion at the rocket launch site “indicating that there were additional munitions in the location”, the Isaf said.

The Isaf and Pakistani soldiers observed the shelling, the spokesman added..

After the incident, Pakistan assured Isaf that it would try to “engage militants attempting to flee deeper into Pakistan”. The Isaf suffered no casualties.

Isaf, ISPR come up with differing versions

By Arshad Sharif

ISLAMABAD: International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and Pakistan’s military have come up with differing versions of an incident which took place on Sunday following an attack on Isaf post by insurgents.

A day after a press statement was issued by Isaf, a spokesman of Pakistan's military said the Isaf had engaged the fleeing militants on the Afghan side of the border and informed a Pakistani post on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

The later version of Pakistan's military contradicts an earlier statement issued by Isaf which said that after an attack on the Isaf base in Paktika on Sunday, the international force in Afghanistan launched “a coordinated artillery strike into Pakistan”.

Earlier in the day, BBC quoted a senior officer of Pakistani Army as saying that the “attack by the Isaf forces took place in Angoor Adda in South Waziristan”.

The Isaf statement said the military post in Paktia had received two separate rocket attacks from a location within Pakistan after which Isaf attacked the “enemy position” in Pakistan.

The statement was released following the denial of a Washington Post story by the government that a tacit understanding existed between Pakistan and international forces in Afghanistan regarding targeting of militants inside Pakistani territory.
 
but what happened to the ARabs who were staying away from teh fight last year, and teh group of uzbeks that were helping the army??? or was that just rumour?

Actually, what I heard was more like Mullah Nazir chased off/captured/killed loads of violent Uzbeks for us. Uzbeks wont help the army, they are illegal scum.
 
Warplanes, troops kill 40 militants in Bajaur, Swat

Thursday, 20 Nov, 2008 | 02:32 PM PST |


KHAR: Pakistani forces killed 40 militants on Thursday as artillery and jet fighters backed ground troops fighting in the Bajaur tribal region, and an air strike hit militants in Swat valley, officials said.

Jets and artillery killed 24 people, including 11 foreign fighters, some of them Uzbeks, as they pounded suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda hideouts in the Bajaur tribal region, officials said Thursday.

The rebels were killed in overnight jet attacks and Thursday morning artillery and mortar bombardments at four places in the Bajaur district, part of the troubled region bordering Afghanistan, government and security officials said.

A security official said the dead included four Uzbek commanders, who were trained al-Qaeda militants involved in the recent killings and abductions of members of a tribal force known as a lashkar, which was formed last month to help purge the area of insurgents.

A local government official, Mohammad Jamil, said the attacks had killed two Uzbek commanders.

Residents said helicopters circled overhead during the Thursday morning artillery attack.

Jamil said the operation was launched late Wednesday after several people were killed on Monday in fighting between militants and the lashkar.

In that fighting, dozens of militants ambushed the lashkar and later besieged the house where the group of elders had taken refuge.

The heavily armed rebels killed four tribal elders and abducted several others including an influential tribal chief, Ismail Khan, officials said.

Troops were also battling militants in the northwestern valley of Swat.

Sixteen militants were killed in an airstrike on a school building used by militants in Swat's Matta town on Thursday, a military official said.

DAWN.COM | NWFP | Warplanes, troops kill 40 militants in Bajaur, Swat-ss

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So where are we at?

2000 plus dead and counting - not enough yet by me.
 
That number is not accurate, according to some reports...its more like 300-500. But I really dont know.:undecided:
 
Another good piece from Jason Burke and the Guardian:


An old army in a new war
The Pakistani army is engaged in a gritty battle with Afghan militants in a border area where it has never had authority. Jason Burke reports from Loesam

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Pakistani army soldiers in Bajaur. Photograph: Jason Burke/Observer​

Loesam is a long way from anywhere. Once a small town in north-west Pakistan, on the Afghanistan frontier, it has been razed to the ground. The bazaar is a pile of rubble, homes scraped down to their concrete foundations. The only building still upright is the mosque that stands in the corner of what once was the local petrol station. The population has fled.

A few hundred metres out of Loesam, the 25th Punjab regiment of the Pakistani army is digging in. Those few hundred metres were seized the day before in a short, sharp engagement with militants entrenched in mud-walled compounds, stands of slim ash, birch trees and dry valleys with their yellow dust walls on their outskirts.

Heavy machine guns and mortars still trade fire with militants on the outskirts of the town - a few miles from Khar, the administrative capital of the Bajaur agency - dropping shells just a few hundred metres from where Colonel Javed Baluch drinks tea with an unsettling insouciance while ordering artillery strikes on a pink plastic field telephone.

Nine years ago I spent a week with the Pakistani army engaged in a scruffy little war with India on their eastern frontier. Now they are engaged in a similarly gritty, unglamorous, ill-defined battle with Islamic militants on their western borders.

Many of the officers fighting around Loesam are convinced that their old enemy, the Indians, are financing and organising the extremists that they have so far lost 84 men fighting. This conviction is rooted in a traditional distrust of their regional rival, their own answer to the question "who stands to gain from Pakistan's weakness?", and perhaps because it is easier, in psychological terms, to kill fellow-citizens and fellow Muslims in large numbers if they are believed to be in the pay of a foreign power.

The militants are largely local men from the Bajaur tribal agency – one of Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas - reinforced with contingents of Afghans and extremists from further afield. That they are dying in large numbers is undoubted. I watched as a Cobra attack helicopter, supplied by the Americans, hovered above one village, rattling rockets and huge rounds from rotating guns into compounds.

"The first few dozen or so bother you," the 38-year-old pilot later told me. "But when you've killed hundreds or thousands, you stop worrying. And anyway, I just need to think about the videos these guys put out every week or so showing how they decapitate my friends and comrades."


How is the Pakistani army different after a decade? I could see two changes: some new equipment, purchased with American money, and a new mentality infused with new ideas - that Mossad or the CIA are responsible for 9-11, that the west is set on keeping Islamic nations weak, for example – that few held 10 years ago. Such ideas are most common among the middle ranks. In another decade, many such men will have been promoted.

But there is much continuity, too. The heritage of the British empire is still strong. Officers are predominantly from the Punjab region, on the other side of the country from where they are currently fighting. They do not speak the language of their enemy, literally and figuratively. Many of their men, particularly those of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, are locally recruited.

The second world war vintage artillery that I saw in action a decade ago has been replaced but the clear divisions separating officers from enlisted men inherited from former colonial overlords have not. Gunner commanders still direct fire from rear bases while playing cricket – and admit it with a laugh to their commanding officers – and when I scuttle across open ground into a recently captured compound I am immediately offered tea in porcelain cups and saucers with biscuits on a tray. :D

A mile or so from the headquarters of the military operation in Khar, the administrative capital of the Bajaur agency, are the offices of the political agent - the representative of the Pakistani government in this constitutionally semi-autonomous land. Shafi Rullah Wazir sits in his guarded compound and liaises with the local tribes. Recently these tribes have built up lashkars - informal militias - and have taken on the militants themselves.

Shafi Rullah is from South Waziristan, another tribal agency to the south which has also seen fierce fighting. One thing that the local tribes do not lack is firepower. Legally they all have the right to bear arms. "We all have weapons," he says, grinning widely. "Back in my village, in my home alone I have four Kalashnikov and a rocket launcher."

The Pakistani army officers refer to the militants as "miscreants" – a slightly less loaded term than "terrorists". It is an interesting lexicographical way of demilitarising what is currently an almost purely military operation. The Americans across the frontier in Afghanistan have been blocking the passes with sensor devices and local troops to cut off the flow of reinforcements and supplies. There are frequent meetings between the commanders on either side of the frontier. Winter is coming, which will help when the snow falls.

Back in Loesam, as the rhythm with which the mortar shells crack into buildings on a nearby ridge starts to intensify and the small arms fire from the militants starts to get more accurate, pinging and whipping over our heads, Colonel Baluch tells me the aim of the war is to "restore the writ of the government". No government has ever had much authority here. This is going to be a long war.

Pakistan-Afghan conflict: An old enemy in a new war | World news | guardian.co.uk

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Love the pink field telephone by the way. My first impression was that they snagged it from one of the abandoned houses or militant hideouts, 'standard issue' eh?:D
 
That number is not accurate, according to some reports...its more like 300-500. But I really dont know.:undecided:

Any particular reason to not trust ISPR reports, other than Bill Roggio's ranting?

I would like to point out that at the beginning of the conflict, most Military reports on casualties were also validated by journalists in the local papers through local sources. I used to keep an approximate running tally in my head, and I wasn't surprised when the ISPR stated 1500 dead. That was of course before the locals evacuated and confirmations became harder, but I see no reason to doubt that number.

I think one of the articles mentioned here pointed out that as far as bodies are concerned, relatively few are found, which has been attributed to the militants taking away their dead and quickly burying them. The same was reported about casualties inflicted by NATO in Afghanistan. The bodies don't always match up with the intel. In fact, one of the reasons why the initial US investigation into the bombing of the school that killed several dozen villagers and children, was that they didn't find any physical trace of the claimed dead. It was cell phone footage that emerged later that indicated that far more civilians had been killed.

Again, this was the result of the Tribes quickly burying their dead, as tradition demands.
 
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25th Punjab Regt. is an elite Infantry unit of the PA. so they are using their best soldiers.
 
"25th Punjab Regt. is an elite Infantry unit of the PA. so they are using their best soldiers."

A couple of thoughts- Judging by the photo, the position is immaculate- clean; neatly stacked sandbags along the ramparts; a simple tea table adorned with a porcelain teacup and a small container. His command section seems to involve a single RTO manning a PRC-77 radio. The colonel is in helmet, ballistic vest and has his personal weapon with him.

The pink satelliate phone and carrier sitting on his lap are a mind-blower. I'm sure that's his wife on the other end and not some artillery battery. As to the cannoneers-

"Gunner commanders still direct fire from rear bases while playing cricket – and admit it with a laugh to their commanding officers..."

25th Punjab Inf. Regt. may be a fine outfit but Col. Baluch better go grab his artillery commander and get his *** back up with the guns.:lol:

My sense of artillery professionalism won't allow me to believe that comment. I doubt that these men would direct their cannons from a cricket field were they engaged against the Indians in the Punjab or along the Kargil/LOC. I further doubt that this battle is taken any less seriously by your military commanders.

Mr. Burke, methinks, plays to a British audience with a wee tad of hyperbole. Boost the ol' newspaper circulation, don't you know?:agree:
 
I think one of the articles mentioned here pointed out that as far as bodies are concerned, relatively few are found, which has been attributed to the militants taking away their dead and quickly burying them. The same was reported about casualties inflicted by NATO in Afghanistan. The bodies don't always match up with the intel. In fact, one of the reasons why the initial US investigation into the bombing of the school that killed several dozen villagers and children, was that they didn't find any physical trace of the claimed dead. It was cell phone footage that emerged later that indicated that far more civilians had been killed.

Again, this was the result of the Tribes quickly burying their dead, as tradition demands.

Thank you for that, it really cleared things up.

It was no ranting but the body thing that had me confused. I personally feel we should make a point of collecting the bodies, not to use them as trophies or dance around them like the Indians have a habbit of doing or even show them to the cameras, but to make a point by being the ones who hand them back to the tribes or burying them if no one comes to collect. It makes the point you know about who is incharge, who is greater in the military as well as moral field. And for obvious reasons like identifying and tracking the enemy (including those who ask for the bodies).

In my view, if the rebels get to drag away the vast majority of their dead in a firefight, then we are not aggressive enough. But thats just my humble and (probably) uneducated opinion. I trust the ISPR ofcourse, I don't think Pakistan Army really realizes the importance of misdirection or subterfuge or even propaganda, so what the ISPR says is 100% true to the best of the Army's knowledge.
 
Love the pink field telephone by the way. My first impression was that they snagged it from one of the abandoned houses or militant hideouts, 'standard issue' eh?:D

You better believe it. I am sure it was found in one of the houses and put to use. Army field phones are usually the drab black or beige ones.
 
A couple of thoughts- Judging by the photo, the position is immaculate- clean; neatly stacked sandbags along the ramparts; a simple tea table adorned with a porcelain teacup and a small container. His command section seems to involve a single RTO manning a PRC-77 radio. The colonel is in helmet, ballistic vest and has his personal weapon with him.

The pink satelliate phone and carrier sitting on his lap are a mind-blower. I'm sure that's his wife on the other end and not some artillery battery. As to the cannoneers-

I further doubt that this battle is taken any less seriously by your military commanders.

I really don't get what (if any) point you are trying to make S-2. Care to clarify?
 

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