News Analysis: Pakistani forces launch fresh offensive to further choke militants' cross-border movement

Pakistani troops are battling militants in a rugged mountainous region to deprive them of one of their remaining few bases and to block a key route they use for cross-border movement, recent army accounts have confirmed.

Hundreds of soldiers, backed by air power, launched the fresh major offensive in the Khyber tribal agency near the Afghan border on Aug. 16, as part of a broader strategy to secure all border regions and dozens of militants have been killed as a result and their hideouts destroyed in the Rajgal Valley since the launch of the operation, army officials said.

Officials believe that militants had been exploiting the difficult terrain to enter Pakistan and Afghanistan to carry out terrorist attacks, after the Pakistani authorities introduced new monitoring systems at official crossing points.

The army said the operation, codenamed "Khyber-3", was necessary to shut down movement through the Rajgal Valley along the Pak-Afghan border and to "reinforce troops' deployment and to effectively check and guard against terrorists' movement along high mountains and all-weather passes in the Khyber Agency."

Previously there were no checks on the movement of the militants as the Rajgal Valley was not in control of local forces until the ground and air operation was launched.

Currently, the ground forces have advanced into the valley and security officials insist the offensive will continue until the area is completely secured and cleared of the militants who are believed to have been using the valley for their hideouts, after they were expelled from other areas, the officials said.

People familiar with the area have also noted that the Rajgal Valley is very close to the Afghan border, and militants would typically use this route to easily cross the border as the mountainous valley is covered by forests and the militants would use the coverage to hide there. After the offensive, however, it will now be difficult for the militants to operate covertly and breach the border, as Pakistani ground troops are moving towards the valley to take back control.

Political and military analysts are of the view that the militants usually use very difficult routes for cross-border movement and they will now be facing serious problems if these routes are choked by the army.

"The militants prefer inaccessible routes to avoid any risks, so if these routes are also blocked their ability to move freely and their subsequent operations will be severely diminished," Ahmadullah Ahmadzai, a political analysts with knowledge of the current situation, told Xinhua. He added that it will not be very easy for the militants to quickly find alternative routes for their nefarious activities.

Militants have previously taken advantage of free cross-border movement and thousands would have entered Pakistan from Afghanistan without passports or visas. Now, however, everyone who enters Pakistan from Afghanistan is required to carry passports and valid visas, Ahmadzai explained.

The current operation in the Rajgal Valley is seen as very significant by military strategists to ensure that the achievements already made as the result of a series of broader operations in the tribal regions are not negated. The government, to this end, has already announced it will wind up operation "Zarb-e-Azab" by the end of 2016, so the security forces can focus on securing all the border regions.

Zarb-e-Azab, launched in 2014, was a wide-reaching, joint military campaign carried out by the Pakistan Armed Forces against a number of different militant groups. The offensive was initially launched in North Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in response to a terror attack on an international airport in Karachi.

There has been a substantial decrease in terror attacks in Pakistan, military officials have attested, because of the success of such operations in the tribal areas. Now the focus is also on urban areas where security forces have already started "combing operations" against the militants, military sources have said.

On Sunday, the army said that a combing operation was conducted in the Hangu district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and in the northern Gilgit area, where several terrorists were arrested and weapons including explosives were recovered.

These operations were conducted as the militants have now opted for soft targets and killing civilians, as was seen on Aug. 8, when a suicide bomber brutally killed over 70 people, mostly lawyers, at a hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta, where they were gathered to mourn the death of a murdered colleague. Endit