Perspectives

World

Global class struggle

Pandemic

Arts & Culture

History

Capitalism & Inequality

Anti-Imperialism

Videos

Podcast

Marxist Library

Socialist Equality Party

topnav

icfi

International Committee of the Fourth International

history

History of the Fourth International

wsws

About the WSWS

iysse

International Youth and Students for Social Equality

sepnav

2020 US elections

Coronavirus pandemic

SEP (US) presidential campaign

Free Julian Assange!

oldhotnav

home

Home

search

Search

clock

Updates

user

Profile

metanav

Politics

Perspective

Workers Struggles

Economy

Science

Philosophy

News & Analysis

Socialist strategy

The politics of the pseudo-left

Inequality and the social crisis

War and geopolitical conflict

The Fight Against Fascism

Immigrants and refugees

World News

The Matamoros workers rebellion

Los Angeles teachers strike

The “Yellow Vest” protests in France

The fight against the GM plant closures

The Struggle at UPS

Autoworkers struggles

Education in the US

Amazon

Film Reviews

Film Festivals

Interviews with Directors and Artists

Book Reviews

Art &amp; Photographic Exhibitions

Music Reviews

Theater and Dance

Art &amp; Socialism – Lectures &amp; Essays

The 1917 Russian Revolution

Leon Trotsky

Fascism &amp; the Holocaust

US History

The American Revolution

1998 Lectures: Marxism and the Fundamental Problems of the 20th Century

2005 Lectures: Marxism and the Foundation of the Fourth International

This Week in History

World Economy

European Economy

US Economy

Marxist political economy

Questions and replies on Marxist economics

Human Genetics &amp; Evolution

The Internet

Space Research &amp; Astronomy

Climate Change

The Enlightenment

Existentialism and Post-modernism

Religion

more...

mainnav

Fourth International

IYSSE

Contact

Donate

hotnav

Global Class Struggle

Browse articles by country

News & Commentary

WSWS Chronology

Browse online

Mehring Books

Monthly archive

Newsletter

RSS Feeds

fullnav

Why Study the Russian Revolution Vol I & Vol II

default

The Truth Behind the Bankruptcy of Detroit

arts

The Historical &amp; International Foundations of the Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit

correspo

Castroism and the Politics of Petty-Bourgeois Nationalism

In Defense of Leon Trotsky (second edition)

editorials

The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left: A Marxist Critique

The Heritage We Defend: A Contribution to the History of the Fourth International

ic-archive

The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution

news

A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990 - 2016

perspectives

Fundamental Problems of Marxism

philos

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

science

Thirty Years Since the PATCO Strike

workers

The Historical & International Foundations of the SEP, Sri Lanka

world

slsep

The Gelfand Case

h-icfi

mehring

Why Are They Back? Historical Falsification, Political Conspiracy, and the Return of Fascism in Germany

eu-right

3e100eac-d3bf-4017-9707-2bf14838a39c

efbc15ec-2e17-45fb-967e-6c7e2a6cb3ff

<placeholder type="page-article-inline-mautic-form" design="" description="false" heading="true"><placeholder type="text-line">Sign up for the WSWS email newsletter</placeholder><placeholder type="text-block"><p>Some content</p></placeholder><placeholder type="mautic-form" form-id="133" html-id=""></placeholder></placeholder>

wsws newsletter

Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA) and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) have been plunged into the heaviest fighting between government troops and Islamist and Pashtun tribal militants in more than two years. Fierce battles have taken place this week in Bajaur, the northern-most tribal agency, which borders Afghanistan’s Konar province. Dozens of fighters on both sides have been killed and tens of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee their homes.

The chief secretary of the FATA, Habibullah Khan, told Agence France-Presse: “We have around 135,000 people who have left their homes there [Bajaur]. We have directed officials in adjoining districts to provide shelter, food and health care to the migrating families. We are setting up more camps to help these people, just like refugees.”

The Pakistani military offensive in Bajaur and the tremendous human suffering it is causing are the direct outcome of US pressure on the new civilian government of Prime Minister Yousuf Rusa Gilani, which took power after elections in February. With increasing heat, the Bush administration and US military commanders have demanded that Gilani order a full-scale crackdown to prevent Afghan guerilla fighters using the FATA as a base for their war against the US and NATO forces occupying Afghanistan.

The Bajaur agency is under the effective control of militants loyal to Maulvi Omar and Faqir Mohammad, the local representatives of the Pakistani Tehrik-e-Taliban movement. It is believed to be one of the main bases for Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami movement, which is fighting the US-led occupation in an alliance with supporters of the former Taliban regime. It is alleged that Al Qaeda members are also hiding out in its rugged terrain.

Several hundred militants from Bajaur are believed to have crossed into Afghanistan on July 13 to attack a newly established American post in the Wanat district of Konar. Nine US soldiers were killed and 15 wounded in one of the costliest days for American forces since the October 2001 invasion.

On August 6, some 200 to 300 troops of the Pakistani paramilitary Frontier Corps made what appears to have been a poorly planned attempt to reoccupy abandoned posts near the town of Loyesam and cut off insurgent routes over the border. They came under almost immediate attack by heavily armed tribal fighters.

After three days of fighting, the government troops pulled back, leaving behind over 70 dead or captured and several tanks and armoured vehicles. Since last weekend, Taliban fighters have established defensive positions in the villages surrounding the agency capital, Khar. They have reportedly blocked the main highway line linking Bajaur with the adjoining agency of Mohmand and seized the main road to the capital of NWFP, Peshawar.

Reports indicate that the Pakistani military has been pounding the Taliban positions with jet fighters and helicopter gunships throughout the week. Dozens of houses, several mosques and at least one school have been reduced to rubble. On Tuesday, Pakistani officials claimed they had killed a senior Al Qaeda leader, Abu Saeed al-Masri, also known as Mustafa Abu al-Yazid. Yazid was alleged to have played a major role in plotting the September 11 attacks and terrorist operations since.

The claim has not been confirmed and may be an attempt to refute recent US accusations that sections of the Pakistani intelligence services are still assisting Islamic extremists, as they officially did until 2001. Government spokesmen have also downplayed their own losses while claiming that “hundreds” of Taliban militants have been killed. The exact number of casualties from the week’s fighting is shrouded by the contradictory reports.

Bajaur is now the third battleground in the Pashtun regions of Pakistan. Fighting was already taking place in the Swat Valley district of NWFP and in areas of the Khyber tribal agency, to the west of Peshawar. The next areas that are likely to be targeted are the agencies of South and North Waziristan—the strongholds of the overall leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud. The area is also the base for the Afghan Taliban warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani. Numerous passes exist in the mountainous region through which his fighters can move into southern Afghanistan.

On Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar told the Associated Press that the government operations in the Swat Valley and the tribal agencies meant “it is an open war between us and them.” The same day, a Taliban bomb destroyed a military van as it left Peshawar. The massive blast hit other vehicles in the vicinity, killing a five-year-old girl. Nine Pakistani Air Force personnel and civilian employees in the van were killed.

On Thursday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosion outside a police station in the city of Lahore, the capital of Punjab province and far from the front line of the conflict. Seven people were killed. The attack may signal the beginning of a concerted campaign of Islamist bombings targeting Pakistan’s major population centres. Last week, nine prospective suicide bombers from South Waziristan were arrested in Lahore in possession of explosive-laden vests and small arms.

The growing violence in Pakistan is an extension of the US military attempt to turn Afghanistan into an American client state in Central Asia. If the insurgent safe havens in Pakistan cannot be closed down, the US and NATO forces occupying Afghanistan face what a British commander referred to as a “generational war”—a conflict lasting for another 20 years and consuming vast resources.

Occupation troops and the Afghan government army and police control the main cities and towns and can secure strategic roads, bridges and landing strips. Insurgents, however, move with relative impunity in the countryside. Large sections of the Pashtun population in southern and eastern Afghanistan openly support the resistance to the US and NATO invaders and provide assistance and information. When necessary, the insurgents can retreat over the border to bases in Pakistan to re-supply, treat their wounded and train new forces.

A classic guerilla war is taking place. Insurgent operations along the major highways linking Kabul with cities in the south and east are creating havoc for the occupation forces. Over recent months, bridges have been destroyed and dozens of supply convoys ambushed. An anonymous manager of a western company contracted to truck supplies to NATO forces told the British 

 this week: “In the summer months, I would expect to be attacked once or twice a week.”

A Kabul-based fuel trader, Matthew Leeming, reported: “The Taliban’s new tactics of blowing up bridges between Kabul and Kandahar, forcing convoys to slow down and become softer targets, is causing severe problems to companies trying to supply Kandahar from Kabul.” In a major attack in June, a convoy of 50 trucks was virtually destroyed.

Over the past week, at least 20 US and NATO troops have been killed or wounded by roadside bombings, ambushes or suicide bombings in various parts of Afghanistan, though mainly in the provinces that border Pakistan. Three American soldiers were killed on Thursday by an explosion and two more on Friday in a Taliban ambush. For the third month in a row, more US troops have been killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

Overall, 573 American soldiers have died in the Afghan theatre since October 2001, with close to 2,500 wounded. Britain has lost 115 dead and Canada 90. In a rare attack in the northern areas of the country, where other NATO countries provide most of the occupation troops, the first Latvian soldier to die in the war was killed by a roadside bomb on Monday in the province of Faryab.

The desperation of the occupation forces is reflected in the virtually daily killing of Afghan civilians by indiscriminate air strikes or trigger-happy troops at checkpoints. On Tuesday, British soldiers in Helmand province shot dead a man who did not slow down as he approached a road block. The following day, British forces severely wounded three people in a car that tried to overtake a line of traffic.

The occupation forces are now carrying out more than 20 air strikes on alleged but unconfirmed Taliban targets every day in Afghanistan. Afghan officials reported that an attack last Saturday in the province of Kapisa killed 12 civilians and wounded 18 others.

The NATO-commanded International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) admitted in a press release that at least eight Afghan civilians were killed by helicopter gunships that were called in after an ambush on Australian troops on Monday. ISAF claimed that 25 other people killed by the gunships were all Taliban fighters.

More than 1,000 Afghan civilians have been killed this year as a result of insurgent attacks or by the occupation forces, as well as 1,500 to 2,000 alleged guerillas. As the carnage escalates and the hatred of the Afghan people toward the US-led occupation mounts, so do the calls in the United States for more troops to be sent and for the US military to conduct its own hot pursuits and air strikes over the border into Pakistan. The campaign is being spearheaded by Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has made the escalation of the Afghan war the centre-piece of his foreign policy.

The Pakistani government, fearful of popular opposition to any such incursions, formally denies the US permission to carry out attacks on its territory. The ongoing air strikes on militant camps, however, make clear that covert operations are taking place. On Tuesday evening, an unmanned American Predator surveillance aircraft fired missiles into an alleged Taliban safe-house in South Waziristan, killing at least nine people.

If the Pakistani military proves incapable or unwilling to subjugate the tribal agencies, the next stage of a war that has already dragged on for close to seven years may well be American ground troops crossing the border to attack guerilla safe havens.

Hundreds dead in fighting along Afghanistan-Pakistan border

as-pak

Pakistan

asia

Asia and the Pacific

The archive lists all articles that have been posted on the <em>World Socialist Web Site</em> by date.

World Socialist Web Site

<name>This WSWS AI chatbot</name> delivers concise, historically grounded responses from a socialist perspective to deepen your understanding of world events.

When you submit a question, this tool searches articles published by the World Socialist Web Site since 1998 and other sources from the Trotskyist movement and ranks the most relevant results. A large language model then draws on these articles to generate a response. The AI may not always fully understand your question or be able to provide a precise answer. In some cases, a pre-written response may be shown instead. For more information, please see our FAQ and AI policy or contact us directly.

How the WSWS AI chatbot works

Ask the WSWS

Color Theme

Unlimited queries, personalized features and more

By continuing, you agree to our <privacy>Privacy Policy</privacy> and <terms>Terms of Service</terms>.

Sign in to the WSWS

Get more with the pro plan

Add websites, PDFs, images as custom sources

Add your own sources

Make changes to your name here. Click save when you're done.

Edit your name

Log out of the WSWS AI Chatbot as {email}?

Are you sure you want to log out?

All our articles you've <strong>bookmarked</strong> in this browser will automatically appear here.

My reading list

All our articles you've <strong>visited</strong> in this browser will automatically appear here.