Pakistan

Of all the tribal agencies and districts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northwest Pakistan, few have assumed as much importance for the United States since September 11, 2001, as South Waziristan. Comprising 6,619 square kilometers, or about 2,555 square miles, South Waziristan is the country’s southernmost tribal agency and the largest by area.

A sectarian history

The northwestern tribal region of Pakistan known as Khyber Agency is just across the Durand line from the Tora Bora cave complex, the mountainous hideout from which Osama bin Laden escaped in late 2001. Named after the historic Khyber Pass, Khyber Agency covers 2,576 square kilometers and has a population of 546,730. It is subdivided into three administrative units—Bara, Jamrud and Landi Kotal. The remote Tirah Valley is small but geographically important, and is believed to have been used by al-Qaeda militants escaping into Pakistan in the wake of U.S.

Mohmand Agency suffers the same economic and governance problems as other regions in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

North Waziristan, the second-largest of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, is the most important springboard for violence in Afghanistan today, much as it has been for decades. The most important militant group in the agency today is the Haqqani Network.

I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me 20 years ago that America would someday be routinely firing missiles into countries it’s not at war with. For that matter, I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me a few months ago that America would soon be plotting the assassination of an American citizen who lives abroad.

Insurgent forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot survive on ideology alone, but depend on two inextricable resources -- money and manpower. Unless the United States and its partners can significantly reduce the amount of money available to pay and arm Taliban foot soldiers, there will be little chance of defeating the insurgency and developing the necessary stability to allow Afghanistan to stand on its own and Pakistan to maintain its fragile democracy.

Though Pakistan has not completely adopted the models, tactics, and best practices of counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine advocated by Western strategists, there is considerable evidence of movement in recent years toward a hybrid approach. Security forces have historically employed a variety of tactics including raids, “coercive sorting,” and sometimes population security, but they experienced repeated failures from 2001 to 2008. Though results of the more recent approach seem promising, prospects for long-term success remain unclear.