SOUTH WAZIRISTAN: MINI IRAQ

19. Pitted against the Pakistan Army in the current fighting in South Waziristan, which has already cost the lives of about 190 Pakistani troops, including some commissioned officers, is a mixed force of Chechens, Uzbeks, Uighurs from Xinjiang as well as the Uighur diaspora in the Central Asian Republics, mainly Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan, and some Arabs. These were all members of the Uighur and Uzbek components of bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF), but not of Al Qaeda. They support bin Laden's pan-Islamic ideology and advocate the division of the Islamic world into independent regional caliphates, including one encompassing Central Asia, Afghanistan and Xinjiang. At the same time, they have maintained their separate ethnic identities and have not allowed themselves  to be subsumed in Al Qaeda.
20 They enjoy the support  of the local Pashtun tribals, who have provided them with sanctuaries. Many of the members of this mixed force have married local Pashtun women, acquired landed property and had been indulging in farming until  they took to arms following the military operations launched by the Pakistan Army in October last year under US pressure because of the American suspicion that they are helping the Taliban in its operations in Afghan territory and have given shelter to bin Laden and other senior operatives of Al Qaeda, who had fled from Tora Bora in end-2001.
21.There are no reliable reports of the number of Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs in South Waziristan. Some Pakistani journalists, who had visited the South Waziristan area in March-April,2004,  had estimated the total number of foreigners, who had been given shelter there by the local tribals , as about 600, about 200 of them Uzbeks and the remaining Chechens, Uighurs, Arabs and others. Other reports place the number of Uighurs at about 100. The presence of Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs in the Taliban and in Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's HEI  now operating in Afghanistan has also been reported. Their number is not known.
22. The Pakistan Army has claimed to have killed a large number of these dregs. In a recent statement by the military commanders operating in the area, it has been claimed that nearly 500 members of this force have been killed or captured since March,2004, and that only about a hundred are still active. These claims have to be treated with considerable reserve. Like the American military commanders in Iraq, the Pakistani commanders in South Waziristan have been making highly exaggerated claims of the successes scored by them in the form of arrests and killings of terrorists without being able to produce those arrested or the dead bodies of those killed before the media. Last week, they claimed to have killed 40 terrorists, but admitted that they could find only six dead bodies. They often assert that their claims and estimates are based on electronic intercepts and not physical body counts.
23. Despite their claims of continuing success, the terrorists in the South Waziristan area of the FATA have retained their ability to organise surprise ambushes, attacks with improvised explosive devices and land-mines and mortar attacks. There have also been instances of Pakistani military gunships, given by the US, being brought down by terrorist fire from the ground.
24. While there has been no involvement of US ground troops in the counter-terrorism operations in this area, the Pakistan Army units operating in this area have been in receipt of back-up support from the intelligence collection teams of the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). The results produced by this intelligence support have been meagre and have not led to any significant improvement in the ground situation.
25.In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that since March,2004, the FATA in general and South Waziristan in particular have gradually been becoming Pakistan's mini-Iraq---- with almost daily terrorist strikes by small groups of Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Chechens, Uighurs and Arabs operating autonomously from different pockets.
26.The dregs of the IIF from Afghanistan have not been able to replicate in the Pakistani territory in this region the extensive training infrastructure which Al Qaeda and the IIF used to have in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan pre-9/11. However, a limited training infrastructure is already in place in the areas under the control of the terrorists in South Waziristan, with Chechen and Uzbek instructors providing training to local tribal recruits as well as to recruits from other parts of Pakistan, Xinjiang and the Central Asian Republics. It has been reported that some of the members of the Jundullah (the Army of Allah), a new organisation which was allegedly involved in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Pakistani Army Corps Commander in Karachi in June,2004, had been trained in these new camps by Uzbek instructors.
27. Reliable reports from the area indicate that this mixed force consists of surviving dregs of the jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet troops as well as those of the post-9/11 jihad against the US troops in Afghanistan. Towards the end of the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Moscow started increasingly depending on its Muslim soldiers recruited in the Caucassus and the Central Asian Republics for dealing with the large number of Arab mercenaries, who were trained, armed and inducted into Afghanistan by the CIA and the ISI.
28. In successful Psywar operations, the Afghan Mujahideen and the Arabs were able to brainwash many of them and turn them against Moscow. They came to Afghanistan from the USSR as communists not believing in God. In Afghanistan, they became born-again Muslims. Some of them deserted and joined the Mujahideen, while many others  went back to their country, deserted from the Soviet/Russian Army and started a jihad against their respective Governments in the Caucassus and the Central Asian Republics. The Taliban's fight against the Northern Alliance post-1994 also attracted a number of Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs and those among them, who survived the post-9/11 US military operations, have crossed over into the FATA. They have succeeded in re-motivating the Uzbek, Chechen and Uighur dregs of the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, who had married locally and settled down in the FATA after the collapse of the Najibulla Government in Kabul in April,1992, to take to jihad again by joining them---this time against the US.
29. What role do these dregs play in the on-going jihadi terrorism in the Central Asian Republics and in Chechnya? How many of the Uzbeks are Afghan nationals from the Mazar-e-Sharif area and how many are from Uzbekistan? Do recruits from the CARs manage to come to South Waziristan via Afghanistan  despite the US presence  for being trained there? How do they manage to go back to the CARs after their training---via Afghanistan or via Saudi Arabia/Iran/Turkey? Is there a networking between this mixed force and those operating in the CARs and Chechnya and is there a common command and control? If not, are those operating in the CARs, particularly in Uzbekistan, doing so autonomously? It is difficult to give categorical answers to these questions on the basis of the  evidence available till now. However, attention needs to be drawn to the history of the evolution of jihadi terrorism in Uzbekistan. This could help in a better understanding of the situation.