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A foe indeed
Baitullah Mehsud is ruthless, unforgiving and vindictive. He is his own man and ready to die for his jehadist cause
By Rahimullah Yusufzai
Baitullah Mehsud is the most wanted man in Pakistan. Never has been such a formidable force mobilised in the country or scores of spies and informers let loose to get one man. As if this wasn't enough, the US has joined the hunt by announcing a $5 million head-money for him and sending missile-fitted drones to constantly fly in South Waziristan's skies to target his hideouts.

Between pulpit and protest
Iran stands at a crossroads with an emerging social movement in contest with an authoritarian theocratic order
By Dr Arif Azad
The long-cogitating decision of whether to back down or crack down on green protestors in Iran was tilted in favour of the latter by no less than the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei during his Friday sermon on June 18. This action dashed any hope of the spiritual leader giving concession to a head of democratic steam building up against the clerical regime.

Field Marshal Ayub Khan, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, President General Ziaul Haq, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, General Pervez Musharraf, President Asif Zardari -- and Sadruddin Hashwani.

It takes only a second to realise that Hashwani is the odd one out in this short list of powerful persons who have presided over the fates of several generations of Pakistanis. He is the only one here that hasn't served as either the head of state or government and yet there is a reason why he is in this select group: despite the steep ideological opposites that these elected or self-appointed Pakistani leaders represent, his closeness to them while they ruled the roost is a key part of the success of the enigma that is Hashwani. Why they came and went -- some ceremoniously and others unceremoniously -- but he stayed put and came to rule a different kind of empire; one that is neither fickle nor whose profits come to an end, is an untold story.

Hashwani is considered one of the 10 richest men in Pakistan and that is no mean achievement and one that deserves not to be underestimated for he did not inherit any fortune to catapult himself to this dizzy height. The story of his life and what he has made of it is one that our parents try to inculcate us into following for at the end of it is a pot of pure gold that is yours to keep if you work 26 hours a day, eight days a week for at least half your life. He makes money by the truckloads, raking in pure profits from mostly legitimate commerce, and yet is not averse to doing business the Pakistani way: cultivating connections in high places, putting money in the right places and simply staying ahead of the steep curve that keeps 99 percent Pakistanis beyond the likelihood of emulating him.

And yet, like the proverbial boy that came good, he spends a significant amount of his time and money helping out those without the energy or desire to do what he does. Also, his is not a crude operation; he invests in excellence and standards in all his enterprises whether commercial or philanthropic that put him in a category of his own.

Hashwani governs his empire in his position as the chairman of Hashoo Group that he established in 1960 and which is one of the most diversified industrial groups in the country with interests and assets in the areas of tourism (hotels, travel), real-estate development, energy (oil and gas), pharmaceuticals and IT, among others. While in any western country it would be easy to put a dollar or rupee value on Hashwani or Hashoo Group's net worth, in Pakistan it is difficult to even get access to the figures of taxes paid by business groups leave alone their net worth. What information is available, however, is about his drive and ambition that brought him name, fame and game. Even though he is painfully shy of publicity and keeps himself out of limelight, according to his own account, he nearly became a doctor in deference to his parents' wishes. Like Bill Gates he was also a college dropout because of poor grades. Like the average Pakistani teenager he was more interested in sports and spent time in cricket. But soon after turning 18 he was clear what he would do: business.

Even though he came from a rich family, he decided he would start from scratch and make his own money. He began selling steel products. By the time he was 25 in 1965, he was also a grain and cotton trader, beginning by sending small shipments to the erstwhile Soviet Union. In another five year's time, he beat giants of the field at that time to become the biggest cotton trader in the country. Always one with a keen eye on opportunity and 'speed' being his middle name, he saw that in 1971 Pakistan was left with big surplus of rice after the secession of East Pakistan. He started exporting rice and by 1972 became the largest rice exporter in the country.

This was a remarkable rise and the world of opportunity seemed endless. And then Zulfikar Ali Bhutto launched his nationalisation campaign and Hashwani's trading companies were among other major companies seized by the government. Hashwani, who was in Canada when it happened, had suddenly lost everything. Here's where the real Hashwani emerged that would change his life. Instead of staying put abroad in comfort or taking his money and starting anew in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe as the other 'nationalised' titans began doing, he decided to do the reverse. With his money he began buying large tracts of real estate, and building hotels, building on a side project he had launched by edging close to Field Marshal Ayub Khan whom he had persuaded to launch the Pakistan Services Limited (PSL) that would offer free government land to him and some others to build hotels and bring tourists into the country. He had been working on building Intercontinental Hotel with PIA, Agha Khan and the government being equity partners in PSL.

Bhutto's nationalisation, which cost Hashwani the ownership of his trading companies, didn't stop him from converting this into an opportunity to get loans from nationalised banks for his hotel ambitions. In fact, in an interview to Herald magazine in January 1985 he had this astonishing statement to make about the 1970s business: "No one should be allowed to open a private bank in Pakistan. I am sorry, I do not see any credit-worthy Pakistani that you can allow to open a bank and even take a deposit... From my personal experience I can say that I was victimised when banking was in private hands because of the conflict of interest. Whenever I approached a bank whose directors were involved in trading, they would not finance me. As far as I am concerned the nationalisation of banks was a blessing in disguise."

This was clearly a man with an eye on profit. The deft Hashwani now moved closer to Bhutto and influenced his tourism and sports policy. Bhutto happily declared hospitality as an industry and allowed Hashwani access to loans from government-owned banks for a massive hotel in Karachi on one of his own price of real estate while also convincing the prime minister that he would be able to build Islamabad's first 5-star hotel super fast in time for the Asian Games planned by Bhutto in the federal capital if given state land. This favouritism was cited by General Ziaul Haq in his 1979 'white paper' on Bhutto's 'economic crimes' as part of the litany of alleged violation of rules.

But you have to give it to Hashwani; he triumphed again. The same Ziaul Haq who found fault with Bhutto sanctioning loans to Hashwani, got charmed by him and personally sanctioned a steep loan to purchase PIA's majority shares in PSL. This finally catapaulted Hashwani into the Big Boys' league by putting him atop the country's hotel industry. Soon after, Zia was taken from the air and Benazir Bhutto triumphantly strode to power. Would Hashwani be able to charm yet another leader governing the country? Of course! Hashwani was one of the very few let off the hook by Benazir in her campaign to recover loans written off by the Zia regime. However, Hashwani soon found himself in exile. The grapevine had it that this was to escape the wrath of First Spouse Zardari who allegedly wanted Hashwani to hand over his hotels to his nominee. Fortunately for Hashwani, President Ishaq Khan dismissed Bhutto.

In came Nawaz Sharif and Hashwani's fortunes revived -- he launched himself into oil and gas sector, now that he had not just the Holiday Inn franchise but also Marriott and his own Pearl Continental chain, after having taken over the Inter-Continental international chain. He became such a sure hand at energy acquisitions and raised his profile in this sector that when Sharif was also sacked and Benazir returned to power again, he found in the second-time prime minister and Zardari unusually good friends. The Petroleum Policy announced by the Benazir government was tailor-made for Zaver Petroleum of Hashwani (named after his mother) since it provided that in the event of discovery, local companies included in an exploration consortium will be provided an additional 2.5% share out of government's working interests, provided they have invested a minimum of 5% during exploration. Zaver Petroleum was the only Pakistani company active in the oil and gas exploration business at the time.

In a meeting with the Financial Writers Association in Islamabad on April 16, 1996, Zardari lambasted the bureaucracy for not allowing businessmen to grow in Pakistan and stunt their growth by heavy taxation, regulations and controls. With then Commerce Secretary Salman Farooqi (still his closest aide nowadays in the President House) sitting by his side, he remarked "Our bureaucracy behaves as if it is criminal to make money" and went on to narrate how he had argued with the petroleum secretary only the previous evening about the proposed sale of Burmah Castrol's share in Pakistan Petroleum Limited to Hashwani.

But think and say what you will, Hashwani is anything but ordinary. His business concerns employ over 10,000 people. Very few in the private sector in Pakistan employ so many. He brings excellence and international standards to all his enterprises. He may make a lot of money but he also runs, through his family and aides, in-house charity organisations for the disadvantaged communities including women and children, and financially supports the likes of Imran Khan's Shaukat Khanum Cancer Treatment Hospital, Al-Shifa Eye Hospital, Ibrarul Haq's Sahara Foundation and others. His hotel concerns are so well established and renowned that when his hotels in Islamabad and Peshawar were attacked by terrorists in the last few months, it was deemed that Pakistan itself was attacked.

And in a country not known for treating its citizens equally and fairly, he takes on the state's very own responsibilities by keeping the households of thousands of religious minority members running and keeping their faith alive in unfaithful Pakistan. And even when Pakistan's most powerful come and go, and rise and fall, Hashwani stays, undaunted and firm. Which Pakistani leader has managed that?

I don't suppose it is news to you that we have round about a hundred channels on our TV. On the other hand we still use the old year with three hundred and 365 days, which means every three point six five days -- say every four days, one of the channels is celebrating some special day like the anniversary of its inauguration. Last week, the channel I work for was having the fourth anniversary of its inauguration.

Everyone who appears on the channel, plus everyone who has ever appeared on the channel, which means anyone who has ever been on a channel was invited to dinner at eight at a local restaurant. I got there at eight and there were hardly a dozen people there, but everyone was sitting there quietly. People kept trickling in until at ten the hosts came and told us dinner would be served in a few minutes.

Suddenly as dinner was announced, the place instantaneously filled up, every face you had ever seen on the tube was suddenly there, including hordes of young people. We had a quiet dinner to music played by an orchestra sitting on one side, and then Urooj Nasir a regular hostess and Noor Ul Hassan who is the host on every channel, piped up telling everyone to keep sitting.

The proceedings started quietly with the hosts asking the senior most members their experiences of the channel, and them saying it was their favourite channel, but taking care to insist that all the other channels were all right too. Everyone made it a point to clear that it was the only other 'terrestrial' channel, apart from PTV, while all the others are 'sky' channels. And then they got round to the singers.

Humaira Arshad is a strikingly beautiful young woman, who sings for her supper and has made a name for herself mostly on the channels, and she answered a few questions and then burst into song. The same thing happened with Shazia Manzoor and Arif Lohar, who is the son of Alam Lohar who was the foremost Folk singer. The odd thing is that all the songs of all these singers are familiar to the orchestra and the whole audience, and after the first line the orchestra simply joins in, and so does the audience and it becomes a sing fest.

Then the compares noticed Jawwaad Ahmed who has made a few films and also a name for himself as a singer. No one in the audience wanted to go home and most also wanted to put in their two bit worth singing a snatch of song, and it continued until three in the morning. Arif Lohar managed to join into every song and the audience got up to dance and that is how we Lahoris get our thrills at every such gathering. Whoopie!

Baitullah Mehsud is the most wanted man in Pakistan. Never has been such a formidable force mobilised in the country or scores of spies and informers let loose to get one man. As if this wasn't enough, the US has joined the hunt by announcing a $5 million head-money for him and sending missile-fitted drones to constantly fly in South Waziristan's skies to target his hideouts.

In his late 30s, Baitullah has proved to be a great survivor. He first fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s as part of the Afghan mujahideen and then joined the Taliban militia in the 1990s to capture Kabul and other Afghan provinces. Returning to his native South Waziristan after the fall of Taliban regime in 2001, he started organising the Pakistani Taliban. He fought the Pakistan Army to a standstill in 2004-2005 and forced it to conclude a peace agreement with him in February 2005. The government had to conclude another unannounced peace deal with him in April 2008 after another inconclusive military operation against him.

Right now, the Pakistan's armed forces are in the midst of yet another military action against Mehsud in his part of South Waziristan inhabited by the Mehsud tribe. This time the scope of the operation is bigger and the military command has promised that it would be sustained. There also appears to be greater cooperation between the Pakistan and US armies, the latter helping the former by sharing intelligence and sending the CIA-operated pilotless planes to attack the militants. Under this policy, two US drone strikes were carried out near Ladha in South Waziristan on June 23 in which one was a cowardly and provocative attack on the largely-attended funeral of a militants' commander Khwaz Wali who was killed in the first strike. The strike on the funeral procession killed around 80 people, majority of them old men and other civilians.

The military, along with the government, is also trying to weaken Baitullah by triggering defections from his organisation, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and organising a rival group of Mehsud and Bhittani tribal fighters against him in South Waziristan. The anti-Baitullah faction, known as Abdullah Mehsud group, was strengthened through generous government support but the recent assassination of its commander Qari Zainuddin Mehsud at the hands of his bodyguard, Gulbaddin Mehsud, who was loyal to Baitullah, disrupted efforts to organise a strong challenge to the TTP.

Another element of the three-pronged strategy is to neutralise traditionally pro-government Pakistani Taliban commanders such as Maulvi Nazeer in Wana, capital of South Waziristan, and Hafiz Gul Bahadur in neighbouring North Waziristan, by not taking action against them so that they don't join hands with Baitullah. However, the government would have to work harder to placate Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who was angered by the recent military action in the Janikhel and Bakkakhel area of F R Bannu, which he considers as his patch owing to its proximity to North Waziristan.

Baitullah is madrassa-educated. His father was the Imam of a mosque. His family wasn't known or enjoyed a higher social status. In fact, he was born in Frontier Region Lakki Marwat outside South Waziristan, returning to his family's native place much later as a fighter. His sub-tribe is the Shabikhel Mehsud, whose tribal elders and notables had to accept his dominance when he acquired resources and manpower to become a feared Taliban commander.

Baitullah, named by the Time magazine in its 2009 list of 100 most influential people in the world, is without doubt the biggest threat to the security forces and the government. Most suicide bombers operating in the country are loyal to him and his TTP is the most powerful group of militants in Pakistan. His citation by the Time introduced him in the following words: "He nearly routed the Pakistani Army from the country's embattled North-West Frontier Province, establishing himself as an icon of global jihad -- not unlike his idol, fellow Pashtun Mullah Omar." The US government raised him to the rank of senior Al Qaeda leader by offering $5 million for his capture. This placed him just below Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar with a head-money of $10 million and above a number of other ranking Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. While announcing head-money on Baitullah, the US described him as an Al Qaeda facilitator but was unable to blame him specifically for any crime against America.

However, Baitullah contributed to building a charge-sheet against him by saying in media interviews that he was sending fighters to Afghanistan to fight the US-led coalition forces and declaring support for the Taliban-inspired 'jehad' there. A boastful Baitullah also deprived him of whatever little support he still had in Pakistan by claiming responsibility for suicide bombings against the security forces and law-enforcement agencies in Lahore, Islamabad and elsewhere. This was the first time that he had done so and it helped changed the mind of many Pakistanis who thought foreign hands and not Baitullah and his TTP were behind some of the terrorist attacks in Pakistan. Baitullah subsequently claimed responsibility for the assault by a gunman of Vietnamese origin in the US in which several civilians were killed and threatened to strike in Washington. Few believed his claim or took his threat seriously because he isn't known to have the means or manpower to strike in the US. But there was no doubt that he possessed the power to strike against targets in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The TTP founder is a short-statured and portly man suffering from hypertension and diabetes. When reports of his illness started spreading last year, he responded by marrying the second time. Whenever cornered by the security forces and his many tribal foes, he retaliates by sponsoring a suicide bombing or kidnapping foreigners or someone important in the government. He then makes deals for exchange of prisoners, as he did in case of Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan's ambassador in Afghanistan. He managed to win freedom for about 30 of his men by swapping the almost 300 Pakistani soldiers who had surrendered to his fighters after getting trapped in South Waziristan.

Baitullah is an enigmatic and mysterious person. He has publicly declared allegiance to Afghan Taliban leader Mulla Omar and his links with Al Qaeda appear plausible. He gave refuge to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) leader Tahir Yuldachev and his Uzbek fighters when they were expelled by Maulvi Nazeer's Taliban from Wana. He is a ruthless man, unforgiving and vindictive. Such is his controversial character that he has been blamed as both an ISI and RAW agent and as a man in the pay of not only India and the US but also Israel. However, the more likely conclusion is that Baitullah is nobody's agent. He is his own man and ready to die for his jehadist cause.

In his late 20s, Qari Zainuddin Mehsud dared to stand up to his clansman and one-time commander, Baitullah Mehsud, and paid with his life. Now his brother Misbahuddin has replaced him as the head of the splinter Abdullah Mehsud group named after their slain cousin.

In fact, Qari Zainuddin and his family suspected Baitullah's hand in Abdullah's killing last year in a firefight with security forces in Zhob in Balochistan. The young Qari had been trying for more than a year to put together a group of fighters to challenge Baitullah. His efforts received a fillip recently when the government and the military offered him support in a bid to weaken Baitullah. The government strategy was to trigger defections from Baitullah's group through offers of money and weapons and hand over territory captured by the military in the Baitullah-controlled parts of South Waziristan to Qari Zainuddin's fighters.

The plan suffered a setback with Qari Zainuddin's assassination at the hands of one of his bodyguards, Gulbaddin Mehsud, who escaped after killing his master. That the killer was on a mission assigned by Baitullah became clear when his organisation, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the murder.

A former soldier from the paramilitary Frontier Corps, Turkestan Bhittani belongs to the Frontier Region (FR) Tank, also known as FR Bhittani after the Pashtun tribe that goes by this name and inhabits the area, or FR Jandola after its major town, Jandola, located at the entry-point to South Waziristan.

The Bhittani and Mehsud tribes, despite being neighbours, have often been at loggerheads and this animosity is one reason that seems to have pitted Turkestan Bhittani against Baitullah Mehsud.

Turkestan has performed Haj and fought on the side of the Taliban. But for sometime now and clearly at the behest of the government, he has been challenging the far more powerful Baitullah. As a consequence, he has lost several family members and friends in attacks sponsored by Baitullah. He has been lucky to survive attempts on his life while operating in an area close to Baitullah's strongholds. The risk to his life has increased following the assassination of his ally, Qari Zainuddin Mehsud.

The long-cogitating decision of whether to back down or crack down on green protestors in Iran was tilted in favour of the latter by no less than the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei during his Friday sermon on June 18. This action dashed any hope of the spiritual leader giving concession to a head of democratic steam building up against the clerical regime.

Iran reached a crisis following the June 12 presidential election which returned the incumbent victorious by a big margin against the challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi. Though the election was predicted to be a close-run thing, the actual margin of victory stunned the whole country particularly against the backdrop of Mousavi claiming victory prior to the official results. This set the stage for confrontation between the hardliners and reformists -- a binary which has been the standard narrative within the western media in recent decades. Such confrontations -- the desire of a new generation to strain the leash of the clerical regime -- were manifest in sporadic occurrences during the presidential terms of the reformist Khatami.

These sporadic protests, between 1997-2005, seemed like the build up of a civil rights movement composed mainly of students and some sections of urban middle class. The movement sought to push for demands of openness and allowed itself to be led by reformist president Khatemei. But Khatemei, being cut from the same ideological cloth as the clerical regime, did not lend the desired support to this social movement. I suspect the same thing is happening in Iran at this point in time. We see a growing mass movement around the demands of fairness in electoral process and space for free assembly and expression.

As in the past, this movement has again gathered round a figure that has grown out of Islamic revolution mould. My guess is that though Mousavi, being an artist rather a cleric by training, may go a step further in providing leadership to this movement but not far enough to pose any serious challenge to the status quo of which he has been a part and parcel as the prime minister of Iran during Iran-Iraq war.

It is important to keep in mind that both reformist leaders are seeking to negotiate a limited open space within the parameters set by the guardians of the status quo. They are not seeking a fundamental restructuring of political order as most of the protestors want. Often they are thrust into a revolutionary role by the sheer force of events precipitated by the eruption and slow consolidation of this new social movement. In this sense, slow emergence of the social movement in Iran around civil rights demands seems to be consolidating and enduring.

What the movement badly needs is a bold leadership free from the heritage of clerical regime. Hence, the Western dream of overthrowing clerical regime would remain a dream unless a sustained political opposition outside the Iranian clerical heritage emerges. In this scenario, there are two options available: One, the reformist leadership would have to shake itself free of ideological baggage and provide a bold vision for future. This did not happen under Khatemei who remained committed to seeking limited changes within the status quo. Second, the middle class and other activists, who form the backbone of the current social movement, would have to seek leadership from its own ranks. (Even leadership from exiles may not be acceptable to this movement).

In the absence of these two options, Iran looks set to remain in the grip of clerical regime by virtue of the regime's hold over society. This leads us to the question why reformists have failed to pack a radical punch and why new leadership has not risen from the dashed hopes that each mass mobilisation has produced. A peep into the recent history provides some part of the answer.

Iran's history is replete with protests. The biggest show of street power was led by the Iranian clergy which culminated in the 1979 revolution. From then onwards, Iranian clergy has established its ideological sway over the country extending into the nooks and crooks of civil society. Eric Hobsbawm, a great British historian, has postulated that clerical regime's sheer longevity in power has allowed it to establish its hegemony over society in the Gramscian sense. As a result, the space for alternative or oppositional politics has been systematically squeezed out. This has seen the gradual consolidation of the regime with opposition outside of the system totally extinguished.

Looked at this way the regime may not be as unpopular as it is being made out to be in the Western press. For example, despite the massive rigging there is a strong possibility of Ahmadinejad sneaking in with a small margin. This is now being increasingly acknowledged by independent pollsters and even by veteran Independent correspondent Robert Fisk in his stirring despatches from Iran.

What this shows is that clerical regime's hegemony and hold over the society remains vast and entrenched. It is quite possible to envisage leaderless mass protest not making much impact on the status quo. Therefore, the talk of the armed forces playing neutral in the initial phase of pro-Mousavi protest was largely premature as evidenced in full power of the armed forces deployed to prevent the spread of protests lately. Even more pertinently, the talk of wider rifts within the ruling clerical class may be premature too. The small cracks that have appeared recently are likely to be closed up when protests dwindle in the coming days. There are some hopeful signs for the protest movement too.

Iran stands at a crossroads where an emerging social movement is locked in contest with a dictatorial theocratic order. Though the protest is dwindling following government's brutal crackdown, a new narrative of resistance is being slowly assembled through twitter and youtube. This contest between pulpit and protest would determine the future of Iran.

Not much -- but that doesn't mean nothing -- has been written about the death toll in the ongoing military campaign in Swat. The public and the media -- which is the messenger in this case -- gets only one side's version, that of the government and the military and this comes through the regular briefings that ISPR and information ministry officials give in Islamabad. Here, while the information minister is also present, the major domo of the press conference is usually the head of the ISPR.

As of this past week, the ISPR chief said that the Swat operation was in its final phase. The interior minister, the same day, was also quoted as saying that the 'second and third tier' of the Taliban leadership had been eliminated and that Fazlullah has been "trapped" by security forces. However, it remains unclear as to where exactly Fazlullah has been trapped. The Nation reported on June 21 through a correspondent based in Peshawar that Fazlullah, the head of the Swat Taliban and his aide Muslim Khan, had managed to flee to South Waziristan (where they had been spotted in Makeen) and then also travelled back and forth to Mirali in North Waziristan. It also claimed that both men were seen with Baitullah Mehsud and all three had attended a meeting where representatives of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden had asked Baitullah to shift his theatre of operations to Afghanistan. So when the interior minister was saying that Fazlullah has been cornered, was he saying that he has been cornered indeed in Waziristan? Or was he still in Swat?

Then came a report that Mullah Shah Dauran, Fazlullah's number two, had been injured during a military operation in Kabal in Swat -- perhaps the first time that one of the senior leaders of the Swat Taliban were reported as being injured. Till now, we were being told that the "second" and "third-tier" leadership of the Swat militants was either on the run or had been eliminated -- which is all well and good but such groups can always re-group and re-organise if the leaders go in hiding and manage to survive the operation. Of course, the situation on the ground is something that the media has not really been able to report that much in detail -- for reasons of security for journalists themselves and also because the military has deemed the region out of bounds for the media (again citing security reasons) except when in certain instances reporters are taken on selective trips to pre-chosen areas, assumed to be cleared of militants.

For instance, by way of anecdotal evidence, reading through interviews of people fleeing the area or first-hand accounts of residents who saw these things themselves, or on reports based on interviews of IDPs, there are dozens of instances where shelling by the security forces has killed non-combatant civilians. Yes, again the horror of any war is that there are bound to be some -- if not many -- civilian deaths and that this in an inevitable reality of wars. However, governments do no favour to themselves and least of all to their own citizens when they ignore the existence of these realities -- people are not fools and they know better, even the ones who are not very educated and live in villages. They know that people die in wars and that some of these people are bound to be innocent civilians who have nothing to do with the war itself -- after all, that is precisely what a war is all about -- and hence it is wiser to present this reality to citizens as well.

Of course, the risk of doing this -- from the government and the military's point of view -- is a possible reduction in the support of the war against the militants. However, given the nature and magnitude of the atrocities committed by the Taliban, in particular in Swat and Malakand and in general across the rest of the region, the government and the military will find that the general public may be more understanding than expected on this matter -- for instance many of the IDPs who have blamed the Taliban as well as the military for their current predicament have also said that all that they have gone through is perhaps a price they are willing to pay PROVIDED the government and the military achieve the objective of driving away the Taliban from their region for good and provided that they (the IDPs) can then return home and live in peace -- as they always did prior to the last couple of years.

This is where the issue of covering the war also comes in. Why are foreign journalists being given access in a manner denied to Pakistani journalists? One here is referring to the access given to the BBC's John Sweeney (a multi award-winning investigative reporter whose books include on exposing how Britain armed Iraq) was embedded with the military at its camp in Khwazakhela and who did a whole show for the network's flagship investigative series Panorama.

Are we to assume that Pakistani journalists cannot be trusted to report on the operation and hence foreign journalists are more welcome, or was the BBC given access because its audience is primarily foreign and that the programme would be seen in all the world capitals that matter to Islamabad and Rawalpindi?

On what Sweeney saw during his time with the military in Khwazakhela, the following seemed of particular interest: 1. That one officer told him that the Taliban were using what he said were "solar-powered cells" to fire rockets. "They line up the rockets the evening before and vanish. When the sun comes up, the solar cells are fired up, the circuit is complete -- and boom -- the rockets go off." He then went on to refer to a recent statement (the programme was aired on June 22) by a senior Pakistani government official that the operation in Swat was "almost over" saying that the very military base that he had stayed at during his embedded visit had been attacked one morning by the Taliban using rockets and that one soldier had been killed and another wounded.

Furthermore, he says: "During my time spent embedded with the Pakistani military, Major-General Sajjad Ghani told me that their forces in Swat had killed 900 Talibs and captured 200 more. Yet I did not see a single dead Talib. Our cameraman filmed six Talib prisoners -- one with blood on his shirt -- who were taken away by the army before our team could check out their stories. Even if Maj-Gen Ghani's tally is right, that still leaves a majority of nearly 4,000 Talibs at large in Swat."

The writer is Editorial Pages Editor of The News. Email: omarq@cyber.net.pk