PESHAWAR, Oct 19: One of Pakistan's top military commanders on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden being in the tribal region.
"The way the army has done its deployment, there is nothing that is beyond my eyes or my ears. I have very good surveillance system in place. There is hardly any area, which we have not swept through. Had he been there and the way he moves with security guards and carries signature wherever he goes, I would have gotten him by now. I say he is not there," Peshawar Corps Commander Lt-Gen Safdar Hussain Shah told a news briefing at the Corps Headquarters here.
The briefing, extensive and exhaustive in nature, contained video clippings, aerial snapshots of the now-bombed out terrorist training camp in Dela and power point slides of the military and civilian casualties together with those of the militants continued for about three hours.
The general whose forces are battling militants touched on almost everything from the military operation in South Waziristan to the political process and his rather bitter experience with certain tribesmen and how his trust was shattered by betrayals and lies.
"This has changed my whole philosophy about life. I used to trust everybody and now I have started to distrust everybody."
Gen Hussain denied reports that Osama could be in the region but acknowledged that Tahir Yaldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, was present in South Waziristan 'most probably in the Mehsud area' which harboured the 29-year-old tribal militant, Abdullah Mehsud.
The general reserved the harshest words for Abdullah Mehsud and made no secret about his plan to catch him as soon as possible.
The one-legged former Guantanamo detainee, by his own admission, was behind the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers on October 9.
The elite Special Services Group in a dramatic commando action a week later freed one of the Chinese hostages while the other one was killed by a bullet that pierced through the body of one of the five captors, who were also killed in the operation that lasted 30 seconds.
"The kidnapping of the Chinese was an attempt to spoil relations between Pakistan and China," Mr Hussain said.
"Justice will be done and I am very confident. Justice delayed is justice denied and I want to do it as soon as possible," Gen. Safdar said without going into further details.
He said that the military had the meana and the technology to get Abdullah. "We have the technology to see and hear whatever that is going on there. We got Nek Muhammad in similar fashion," he said, while referring to the 27-year-old tribal militant who was killed in a guided missile attack in a village near Wana on June 18.
FOREIGN MILITANTS: In his assessment, the general said, the total number of foreign militants in the tribal region could be somewhere within the vicinity of one hundred after their displacement from their former base in Shakai.
He said that most of them had either crossed over into Balochistan or sneaked into other parts of the country or had been captured or killed.
His assessment is a far cry from the original 500 to 600 foreign militants given out by President Gen Pervez Musharraf earlier this year while addressing a tribal jirga in Peshawar.
Gen Safdar was also forthcoming on the number of casualties of armed forces, including the paramilitary troops, in the fight against militants since March this year.
The corps commander put the death toll on the security forces including the army and the paramilitary at 171 since March 2004. He said that 21 soldiers were killed and eighty wounded by militants through Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
He said that four children and three other civilians also fell prey to the IEDs planted by militants in different parts of the tribal region.
He said that the army during 35 military operations in the region had captured 579 militants and killed 246 of them, among who, he added, about a 100 were 'confirmed' foreign militants.
Mr Hussain said that he felt humiliated if any civilian was killed in action. He said that he had ordered three courts of inquiry against his soldiers to find out whether civilians killed in Mandatta, Kani Goram and Ludda were the result of the military fire.
"I want to assure myself that my forces are not involved in the killing of civilians. I will hold the people accountable for inaccurate firing. My target are the foreign militants not the locals."
STRATEGY: The general said that the government had several options on dealing with foreign militants but was banking on Mehsud tribesmen to come forward and play their role.
"The use of military force is the last option. I would rather prefer to have a strategy where the use of force is used as a last option. I am banking on the support of the Mehsud people to put up a unified effort to root out foreign militants from their area," he said.
"We want to create an environment for the political administration to take over from the military. There is a thin line dividing the military and the political process," he said.
"My target are the foreign militants and their local harbourers. My fight is not with the local Mehsud tribesmen," he declared.
The military commander acknowledged that media management of the military operation in South Waziristan had been mismanaged and said that he favoured a more open policy including the concept of embedded journalism. "Journalists are free to go anywhere they want to and report every thing they want," he said but said that he could not guarantee their security given the situation in the tribal region.
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