Pakistani insurgents are putting up a fight

Pakistan’s offensive in the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan has met with significant resistance from insurgents, who have retaken one large town, targeted military vehicles with roadside bombs and held off the army’s attack helicopters with antiaircraft fire, U.S. military analysts said Friday.

The heavy fighting has slowed the advance of an estimated 36,000 to 40,000 Pakistani troops into the heart of the contested tribal region bordering Afghanistan, according to a detailed briefing on the week-old ground operation by researchers at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. Meanwhile, the report said, insurgents continue to coordinate suicide bombings and assassinations outside Waziristan.

But the large government force, aided by U.S. drone strikes and intelligence, outnumbers the insurgents and is expected to maintain its methodical, three-pronged push in an attempt to capture key territory held by the umbrella group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in the tribal stronghold of slain insurgent leader Baitullah Mehsud.

“I am not surprised that they (Taliban insurgents) are opting for a pitched battle here,” said Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at AEI, which compiled the briefing report primarily from Pakistani military reports and local news sources. “This is their home town,” he said.

The operation’s success remains uncertain, given that government forces have not yet taken key towns such as Makeen and Kotkai, according to Kagan and AEI researchers Reza Jan and Charlie Szrom, who prepared the briefing.

“Makeen is probably going to be their hardest fight,” Kagan said, noting that several government troops have been killed or injured in rocket attacks in the vicinity.

Last Saturday, Pakistani troops’ advance toward Kotkai was slowed by the large numbers of roadside bombs, which killed at least one soldier. The soldiers surrounded Kotkai and destroyed the houses of some key insurgent leaders there, but the Taliban launched a counteroffensive and retook Kotkai on Tuesday morning, according to the briefing.

Still, Pakistan’s army is demonstrating more sophistication this time around in the use of counterinsurgency tactics compared with its 2004 incursion into Waziristan. For example, although most of the estimated 5,000 residents of Kotkai are thought to have fled, the military has not flattened the town with artillery fire and instead plans to move in in “a more measured way,” Kagan said.

If the operation succeeds, Kagan said, it would deal an unprecedented blow to the Pakistan-based Taliban group. “It’s a pretty well-coordinated plan, but it hasn’t gotten to the objective yet,” he said.