Seems like the fighting between the local tribes and foreign fighters in Pakistan’s Waziristan Province has resulted in the clearing out of some areas now open to Pakistan government forces:

he Pakistan army moved into a known stronghold of foreign Al-Qaeda militants near the Afghan border after a tribal militia battled the militants this week, residents and officials said yesterday.

Ethnic Pashtun tribesmen in the South Waziristan region vowed last month to expel the foreign jihadists, most of them Uzbeks, from their lands. More than 200 foreigners and up to 50 tribal fighters have been killed in clashes since then, government officials say.

Pakistani troops were deployed on Friday evening in mountainous Shin Warsak, about 10km west of South Waziristan’s main town of Wana.

The actions in Waziristan have most people in the West scratching their heads, wondering why Taliban sympathizers would turn on al Qaeda enclaves. But it is clear that al Qaeda has brought the Taliban nothing but sorrow and are a fairly violent and dictatorial lot towards their neighbors. It is not hard to envision why people in Afghanistan and Iraq are tiring of the death their al Qaeda neighbors bring.

When seen in tandem with recent US investments and agreements with Pakistan to beef up border security it would seem the trend in this region is towards stability. These are elements of multi-pronged efforts that include investments and turn the people from violence towards building.

Akram said the objective of Pakistan’s comprehensive strategy to promote peace and progress in the country’s frontier regions was to win over the local population and to isolate the militants.

In this regard, he wrote that last September’s agreement with the tribal elders of North Wazirisitan was essentially an exchange of peace for development, and, contrary to some Afghan assertions, there was no proven link between that accord and the rise of violent incidents in Afghanistan.

“Winning the hearts and minds of the people is even more important than killing or capturing insurgents,” he stressed in his article, captioned ‘A United Front against the Taliban’. “Military tactics that cause collateral civilian casualties and damage property may kill 10 terrorists, but they will create 100 more”.

This transition towards reconciliation and rebuilding is the necessary part of any war. We rebuilt Europe and Japan after we decimated them so as to ensure they would rise out of the ashes an ally and not a future potential enemy. The more we see of this kind of shift from military power to investment the closer we are to a plateau of stabilty and peace. We will need to achieve a series of these in all the areas Islamo Fascism still garners support for their violent strain of Islam, but success will breed more success.

This article lays out the challenge in the area as Uzbeks and other ethnic groups have set up various competing Islamo Fascist enclaves:

t is believed that the Uzbeks militants in the tribal areas belong to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the aim of which is to establish an Islamic state in the Central Asian Republics, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are being commanded by Tahir Yaldushove, an Uzbek, who is living in exile and who keeps moving between North and South Waziristan.

There are around 10 mobile terrorist groups in the Central Asian Republics. The two strongest militant organisations are the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, known to be the most extremist group, and the Hizbut Tahrir (HT) – a softer version of the IMU. Tahir Yaldushev and Juma Namangani first formed the Adolat Party in Uzbekistan. When that was banned they moved to Chechnya and finally to Afghanistan, where they formed the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in 1998.

The aim of the IMU and HT is to get rid of their present rulers and establish an Islamic regime in the whole of Central Asia including Afghanistan.

While a big challenge, it seems progress is being made and locals are on the side of that progress. It may be this kind of approach will be expanded to Iraq and Afghanistan to further isolate and remove the pockets of Islamo Fascism. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out. But clearly some elements of this are working when you have locals willing to go to great lengths to remove foreign fighters from the midsts..