PESHAWAR, Feb 14: While the beleaguered Gilani government looks for ways to wriggle out of the judicial morass, military and paramilitary personnel are fighting some of the toughest and costliest pitched battles in snow-capped mountains to regain control of the strategic Orakzai tribal region, background interviews have revealed.

With much of the attention centred on the legal battle in the country’s apex court, there is little or no talk of how the country’s own ‘existential war’ has progressed in what is proving to be the deadliest operation so far.

Fought at 2,071 metres (6,811 feet) altitude in minus 17 degrees centigrade in Jogi Heights, Operation Koh-i-Sufaid (White Mountain) II launched in November last year, has so far claimed the lives of 71 men of Pakistan Army and the Frontier Corps, five officers among them.

Nearly 300 others have been left wounded, including more than 60 cases of frostbite, according to officials familiar with the operation.

“This is one heck of a tough territory. The British had to send in 45,000 troops to clear the area in 1886,” an official who has served in the area said. “This could well prove to be the mother of all battles,” quipped a security official.

Considering that the operation in the thickly-forested area with knee-deep snow is ongoing, the battle for the control of Orakzai might well turn out to be the deadliest and toughest of all battles Pakistan’s security forces have fought in the entire tribal belt.

Comparable to KS-II, the only other battle — Brekhna (Lightening) II — that had proved to be costly was the fight for the control of Wali Dad Sar in Mohmand tribal region, which had claimed the lives of 77 army and FC personnel.

Add to the operation in Bara sub-division of Khyber tribal region, next to Peshawar since September, where the Frontier Corps lost 47 men, Pakistan’s security forces have lost nearly 200 men in the battles against militants in the three tribal regions.

Government and security officials put the militants’ death toll in the three operations at close to 500, though there is no independent confirmation of the claim.

Operation Koh-i-Sufaid: A combination of regular and paramilitary force launched the first bid to oust militants from their strongholds of Orakzai and Central Kurram in July last year. But it was the second phase of the operation that saw the security forces making some territorial gains of strategic importance, albeit slowly and with many casualties.

Having regained control of the strategic Jogi Heights after long and tough battles, security officials say they are now preparing to make a decisive push to cleanse Sama Bazaar — the last of the militants’ redoubt in Orakzai.

“Now I see some light at the end of the tunnel,” a senior security official said. “There may still be one or two small militants’ pockets here and there but they would no longer be able to pose any serious challenge,” he said.

Just last week, Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani visited Kurram to meet soldiers and was given a detailed briefing on the ongoing operation.

The gains, the official said, had not only enabled the security forces to cut off the transit route between North Waziristan and Orakzai but, if all cleared; it would also enable the government to re-establish its writ over an area that once served as the headquarters of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief, Hakeemullah Mehsud.

Spread over an area of 1,538 square kilometres, Orakzai has a central place among three adjoining tribal agencies, linking with Khyber to the west and by extension to the provincial capital Peshawar, with Kurram and by extension to North Waziristan to the east and Kohat and Hangu districts to the south.

That apparently was the prime reason why late TTP amir Baitullah Mehsud had chosen his trusted lieutenant Hakeemullah to relocate to Orakzai to oversee operations in Khyber, Peshawar, Kurram, Kohat and Hangu.

There is still some debate on, if and when flushed out of the remaining parts of Orakzai, what would be the next stop for an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 or so motley crowd of militants from virtually all over the tribal and settled areas including some foreign militants.

Officials believe that the militants could cross over into remote Tirah Valley in Khyber tribal region, where Lashkar-i-Islam and Ansar ul Islam are already fighting a turf war for some time now.

Plans are already afoot to secure the plains of Bara sub-division to stave off any possible infiltration of militants into the adjoining Peshawar.

The looming question But while the military nears winding up the second phase of the operation ahead of its calendar and make preparations for the third and last phase, whenever it happens, the biggest question is what next.

The 11-member parliamentary committee formed by the National Assembly Speaker in November following an All Parties Conference in Islamabad to firm up recommendations to deal with the militants has yet to convene.

A lawmaker said that it might not happen. Instead, parliamentary committee on national security headed by Raza Rabbani was tasked with formulating recommendations not just in terms of Pak-US relations but also the Pakistani Taliban.

The committee, said the lawmaker, had completed its task with the ‘urgency’ needed but the recommendations that should have come to the parliament with the same sense of urgency, had been delayed due to government-judiciary standoff.

An important political figure told Dawn that there had been at least two overtures from the Taliban but that everything was on hold in the absence of any clear strategy.

Even the military insists it has no mandate to engage in any talks with the Taliban.

The result: while the military continues fighting and offering tremendous sacrifices, there is less and less political focus and ownership. “To say that everybody appears to have forgotten the war we are in is an understatement. The feeling here is that those on the other side of Indus seem to think that Fata is some other territory outside of Pakistan,” a cynical official remarked.