Swat is just the start, next Waziristan: Zardari

[Naveed Yaseen]

LONDON (May 18 2009): Pakistan is to extend its war on the Taliban beyond Swat into the fiercely independent tribal areas bordering Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership are believed to be hiding.

"We're going to go into Waziristan, all these regions, with army operations," President Asif Ali Zardari told The Sunday Times in an interview which took place when he was in London earlier in the week and published on Sunday. "Swat is just the start. It's a larger war to fight."

He said Pakistan would need billions of pounds in military assistance and aid for up to 1.7 million refugees, the biggest movement of people since the country's independence in 1947. The newspaper said to help take on the militants, the Pakistan army would for the first time accept counterinsurgency training from British and American troops on its own soil.

"We need to develop our capability and we need much more support," said Zardari. "We need much, much more than the $1 billion (military aid) we've been getting, which is nothing. We've got 150,000 troops in the tribal areas - just the movement of that number would cost $1 billion".

Zardari appealed for $1 billion in aid for refugees. "If we are to win the hearts and minds of these people we need to be able to relocate them back into civil society, rebuild their houses and give them interest-free loans to restart their businesses," he said. "If we don't they will turn against the government and we will lose the impetus we've managed to create in the country against the Taliban."

President Zardari insisted that the army was committed to defeating the Taliban. "I think the casualties speak for that, the displacement speaks for that", he said. He claimed that officers sympathetic to the militants had been purged. "I'm confident the army perceives the Taliban as much of a national threat as we do". He added: "You cannot fight this war only on the battlefield. You also have to fight it on the economic front - you have to offer something to the youth".

http://www.brecorder.com/index.php?id=40337