TO sustain a successful guerilla war, it helps to have a safe rear area in a friendly or neutral state. The Viet Cong had them in Laos and Cambodia. The Hezbollah run back into Lebanon after their raids on Israel.
And al Qaeda has Pakistan.
More precisely, it has the “tribal areas” of the North West Frontier Province – a rugged, notoriously lawless region just across the (notional) border with Afghanistan. And though it would entail significant political risks, the area may have to be the next battleground of the War Against Terror.
It was into these Pashtun badlands that hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters slipped after the fall of the Tora Bora fortress. And it was from them that they re-entered Afghanistan in force and occupied the Shar-e-kot valley.
It’s impossible to know how many were killed in last week’s battle for the valley. But you can be sure that the survivors will have slipped back across the border into Pakistan, with the help of sympathetic or easily bribed locals.
And they’ll continue to come and go in the same way until Pakistan finally acts to bring order to the region.
Its valleys have long resisted pacification. British India claimed dominion up to the Durand Line, which is now the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but did not seek to bring the Pathan tribes under direct rule. Instead the British demarcated semi-autonomous “tribal agencies,” where tribal custom remained the law of the land, and they claimed jurisdiction only over the main passes and roads.
From time to time, the tribesmen would raid the Hindu-dominated towns and lowland valleys for livestock, women and weapons, or be inspired by a mullah to stage an uprising. And the British would respond with punitive expeditions like the 1897 one that Winston Churchill took part in and described in “The Malakand Field Force.”
At Pakistan’s founding in 1947, its leaders kept the arrangement. Now as then, the government’s law applies only to the main roads (which are often guarded by small picket forts).
This is why the stationing of Pakistani troops in the Tirah valley across the border from Tora Bora was hailed as a major breakthrough. The local tribesmen had previously resisted all encroachments by the Pakistani government. Occasional attempts to bring roads, schools and electricity to the valley were met with volleys of rifle bullets and rocket-propelled grenades.
On the other hand, Pakistan’s government has arguably never really tried to bring law and other benefits of civilization to the peoples of the Frontier. And everyone in the region knows knows that powerful officials have profitable links with the wealthy, heavily armed smugglers and drug barons who thrive on the area’s isolation and lawlessness.
If our efforts to destroy al Qaeda aren’t to be frustrated, then President Pervez Musharaff has to bring the North West Frontier to heel.
It will be argued once again that America shouldn’t lean too hard on our Pakistani ally: The country is simply too unstable and Musharaff’s position too weak. But the truth is that he was able to reverse his country’s cynical, disastrous committment to the Taliban regime without provoking significant unrest.
And the United States has the technology to make the pacification of the frontier possible. Even primitive biplanes were used to remarkable effect by the RAF against these same recalcitrant tribes in 1919 and 1935. And we’ve seen how effective their modern equivalent was against Taliban warriors from the same tribes, on the other side of the border.
The real question, then, is Musharaff’s willingness to risk a campaign that could exacerbate his country’s existing ethnic tensions, and America’s willingness to pressure him in that direction.
These are real uncertainties. But the risks of failing to bring order to the North West Frontier are arguably even greater. Because if it remains a haven for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, Afghanistan will never be stabilized and the whole region will remain a hub for Islamic fundamentalist terror.
E-mail: jforeman@nypost.com