For the third time in less than 24 hours, drones have
struck at a target in the tribal agency of North Waziristan. According to
Dawn, the missiles hit a house and a vehicle in a village just outside of the tribal agency's main town of Miramshah.
Another report said that some of the dead are "foreigners" and others are members of the Haqqani network. North Waziristan is the rear-base of the Haqqani network and home to many other militants from a variety of different militant groups, including card-carrying members of al Qaeda Central. The drone strikes, like Pakistani military action elsewhere in the tribal areas targeting the Pakistani Taliban, slowed down when massive flooding began but are returning as common occurances. So what does the near future hold for the region?
Recently, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates
said that the massive flooding has delayed a Pakistani military planned for North Waziristan. This might be the first time any official, either Pakistani or American, has admited in public that an operation did exist. As I maintained for much of the year, Pakistan was unlikely to go into North Waziristan before August. Given the timing of Ramadan that probably meant they would continue their double-game until an opportunity presented itself after the Muslim holy month. Last year, the Pakistanis waited until October to engage the Mehsud Taliban and their allies in South Waziristan. This left the militants with limited time before winter set into the mountainous region. Might Pakistan wait for similar timing before going into North Waziristan?
I find it unlikely that Pakistan will do much if anything about North Waziristan before the winter sets in. If anything they might aim for a limited operation in the east of the tribal agency against select militant groups, namely "the Pakistani Taliban", "Punjabi Taliban", and Uzbek militants. They would be more likely to focus on Mir Ali rather than Miramshah. The fact of the matter is Pakistan is under immense strain from the sheer numbers of internally-displaced people, both from military operations in other parts of the tribal agency and most especially because of the recent flooding. That flooding also inflicted immense damage on many of the roads and bridges that Pakistan would have relied on throughout Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province(formerly-known-as North-West Frontier Province) and tens of thousands of soldiers are still assisting with flood relief efforts. And then you have to consider areas in central-FATA where the Pakistani army is still engaging militants dedicated to their war against the Pakistani state. These areas include parts of central-Kurram agency, parts of Orakzai agency, and the Tirah and Bara valleys of Khyber agency.
Like in South Waziristan last year, the Pakistani army is unlikely to move against militants focused on Afghanistan. As stated above, they simply can't do it right now. The double game Pakistan plays with the Afghan Taliban(Omar, Haqqani, Gulbuddin) and the U.S. will most likely continue for the rest of the year while they deal with the aftermath of flooding, current military operations, and future operations aimed at "the Pakistani Taliban".