FRONTAL ATTACK ON TALIBAN BY ARMY

AUM
Pakistan Army Attacks Taliban
By Brigadier Chitranjan Sawant,VSM

THE DOOMS day for the Taliban terrorists in South Waziristan in Pakistan arrived on 16 October, 2009 when the Pakistan Army launched a full scale attack from the air and on the ground. When the reports last came in, a fierce fire fight was going on. Under orders of the Army Chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani 28,000 troops were mobilised and a massive attack launched. The helicopter gunships pounded the Taliban positions from the air and destroyed their training camps.

It is a fight to finish, said an Army spokesman who declined to be identified. The point of no return for the Army came when the Taliban laid a seize to the general Headquarters of the Army in Rawalpindi and killed some senior officers including a brigadier and a colonel. Moreover, for more than a week the Taliban terrorists mounted attacks on the security forces and police outfits killing and maiming many to prove to the Pakistan civilian population that the Taliban was in control and not the army or the civil administration. Enough was enough, said the Army and launched a massive hunt for the Taliban in their citadel, South Waziristan.

The new Taliban chief,Hakimullah said that the taliban would not take the assault lying down. A fitting response will be given to the Army. it may be mentioned that the Taliban terrorists have quite a few sympathisers in the Army and the Administration. Further , there are dissensions between the army and the civil administration. It is public knowledge that the Army did not allow the Interior Minister to enter the GHQ to lay a wreath on the martyrs memorial on behalf of the president of pakistan. The point proved was that the Army is supreme in its own domain.
In South Waziristan the civilian population is leaving its home and hearth and fleeing to safer areas. More than 2 million families are likely to be displaced. Many of them have arrived in dera Ismail Khan. The situation is quite chaotic.

The Razmak base of the Army saw a road side bomb burst and killing 4 soldiers and injuring 11 of them. The number of Taliban terrorists killed in air and ground attack has touched double digits.

The Pakistan Army was left with little option but to take a hard line and do what it should have done long ago. The dilly dallying of the generals and terror sympathisers cost many lives of their compatriots. A statement of the Army Chief that the Taliban would fight shoulder to shoulder with the Pak army against India and protect Pakistan's flank had emboldened the taliban. What the army had sown it is reaping. Anyway, an attack now is better than no attack at all on the terroists.