MIR
ALI, Pakistan — A television studio for suicide bombers, a market
offering car bombs in a variety of colors and a secret tunnel filled
with rotting corpses under the local mosque. These were aspects of daily
life in the militant-controlled mountain area of North Waziristan,
according to Pakistan's military.
A lawless region near
the Afghan border, North Waziristan has long been a haven for some of
the world's most-feared terror groups. It was a hotbed for the Pakistani
Taliban and the Haqqani network — which held Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five years.
After years of pressure from the U.S.
and increasing terrorism within Pakistan, the Pakistani military
launched a huge offensive in June to dislodge the fighters. Dubbed
Operation Zarb-e-Azb — or "Strike of the Prophet’s Sword" — it has
forced at least 700,000 civilians to flee their homes and left entire towns rubble-strewn and virtually deserted.
Pakistan's military
claims to have killed 1,200 militants and says it has recovered 200 tons
of improvised explosive devices [IEDs] and ordnance. This is "enough
for the militants to keep on conducting five IED attacks [per day] ...
for 14 and half years," Maj. Gen. Zafar Khattak told NBC News at a
brigade headquarters near Mir Ali.
Faisal Tariq / NBC News
During a drive through the
bombed-out and deserted town, the general points out an "IED bazaar."
Here, he said, a customer could buy "anything from a suicide-bomb jacket
with 50 kilos [110 pounds] of explosives" to a car bomb. "You could,
from a good dealer, even pick the type of color you wanted for the
vehicle that was to be your 2,000-pound car bomb," he said.
According to the
military, the town also had its own IED factory, fronted by an old
medical clinic featuring posters warning about malaria. Inside the
bullet-holed building were bomb-making materials, test tubes, and a
white-board with a formula in Arabic and Cyrillic scripts. Among other
remnants, including maps of Pakistan and the world, were wigs the
soldiers said were used as disguises.
The seized IEDs, weapon
caches and jihadi literature are compelling — "enough to arm an entire
infantry brigade," Khattak said — but the military's claims are
impossible to corroborate. Free movement in and out of North Waziristan
has been blocked for years and independent reporting in the region is
difficult. During a day-long visit, NBC News was embedded with
Pakistan’s 7th Infantry Division, which provided protection but also
controlled movement. The military refused to share details of the 1,800
militants they claim to have apprehended or killed — or which groups
they were linked to.
Back outside the brigade
headquarters, Brigadier Azhar Abbasi sips tea while looking across the
bombed-out town at a distant mountain peak.
"We still take rockets
and sniper fire from there," he said. "They're not civilized, the Tangos
[army speak for the Taliban], but they are bloody good shooters. I've
lost three men from shots that came from over 1,100 yards. All head
shots, two of them in the nose. Dragunovs [Russian sniper rifles] are
their weapon of choice ... Excellent weapons, but terrible men."
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Faisal Tariq / NBC News
For all its bold claims and
triumphant proclamations during NBC News' embed, the Pakistani army has
come under fire from the U.S. and others who say it has not done enough
to take on the militants. Many of the extremists flooded over the
border after the war in Afghanistan, and a Pentagon report released last month said that Taliban attacks launched from "sanctuaries in Pakistan remain a serious problem."
Pakistan is also the country targeted most by CIA drone strikes, according to figures from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It cites more than 400 strikes — killing between 2,300 and 3,800 people — from 2004 until this year.
The Pakistani Taliban
has been blamed for the deaths of at least 40,000 civilians and 5,000
troops during its decade battling against the country's government. The
Haqqani network waged war on NATO forces in Afghanistan and have been
blamed for many of the more than 2,000 U.S. military deaths there. Due
to their wealth and deep links to local tribes and, one Western diplomat
dubbed the Haqqanis "the Kennedys of the Taliban movement."
Most of the soldiers
told NBC News they were angry about the Pentagon report. "If this is not
enough, what it is?" Khattak asked. "I would even suggest that the
Americans put together a team of forensic experts and come over here to
see what we've done, to the infrastructure of terror and even the
Haqqanis. Lets stop writing reports from Washington and do some real
fact finding, shall we?"
Khattak claimed 42 of
his men have been killed in the operation. The day of NBC News' embed
last weekend, the 7th Division reported to have lost another two men and
an officer in nearby Dattakhel to a Taliban ambush.
"Almost every household here was infected by the economy of terror"
Khattak
said his men have been fighting not only the militants, but a culture
in which many of the citizens were "entrenched in a decades long economy
of terror" that made them "invested in the anarchy."
The soldiers travel to a
house that they call a "militant hangout," where footprints of the
fighters are evident. A set of chains hang from the wall on one side of
the main room, their purpose to tie up prisoners, according to an
intelligence officer. They are accompanied by a collection of whips,
knives and surgical tools.
Wajahat S. Khan / NBC News
Also in the building is a
cache of weapons, a collection of jihadi literature in Russian,
Turkish, Uzbek and Arabic, and a booklet with what resembles ISIS
markings. Somewhat out of place are a stash of Bollywood audio
cassettes, mismatched with tapes of Quranic recitations, along with
photographs of jihadis posing with their weapons and superimposed upon
images of lush gardens and pastures, to represent heaven or home.
"Almost every household
here was infected by the economy of terror," Abbasi said. "A hostage
from Karachi or Lahore [Pakistan's main cities] would end up in the
basement of a shopkeeper here, tucked away from the grip of the law.
Almost every family depended on the abduction, crime, narcotics,
gun-running, smuggling or terror economy, directly or indirectly."
Khattak, who is a
Pashtun, cited a "big gun culture in this region." He added: "Every
Pashtun man is allowed a weapon in his own domain, even minus a license.
It's a tradition. But to bury 25 SMGs [sub-machine guns] in your
backyard? That's not tradition. That's terrorism."
In the town of
Miranshah, about 15 miles from Mir Ali, the military showed off the
Taliban's "media center," an old school house full of cameras and
computers where the group's films were allegedly made. The grandest room
is what one soldier referred to as the "suicide studio," where
soon-to-be suicide-bombers would record their last words. The room has a
lush carpet and velvet cushions, with a backdrop of the Taliban's flag.
Wajahat S. Khan / NBC News
Like Mir Ali, a drive
through the central bazaar of Miranshah is a tour of destruction, after
months of being hit by fighter-bombers, helicopter gunships, artillery,
and small arms. But the Taliban's underground headquarters beneath the
town's central mosque was "drone-proof, fool-proof and weather-proof,"
according to Khattak.
A subterranean labyrinth
with more than 40 rooms connected by zigzagging tunnels, "Tango HQ" was
a secretariat, a command and control center, a communication hub and a
guest house. It even included tiny rooms with printed-out pictures of
"heaven," which served as solitary chambers for conditioning
suicide-bombers.
Upstairs, the regular
business of prayer was conducted, with worshippers of all ages coming
and going; downstairs, senior Taliban commanders would enjoy television,
Internet, air-conditioning, the equivalent of a cafeteria, and
underground access to various sections of the city.
But the worst horror was
what one intelligence officer called the "Adam Khor [Man Eating]
Bazaar," a hidden tunnel behind one of the kitchen cupboards in the
underground base.
"It's where the unwanted
and the unwelcome were beheaded, and left to rot, decapitated for
days," the intelligence officer said. "Their bodies were not allowed to
be buried, and they used to stink up the bazaar, as a lesson for all.
The smell still hasn't gone away, even though we cleared the bodies
weeks ago."
Alexander Smith of NBC News contributed to this report.
NBC News
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