POREG VIEW: This headline in The Express Tribune which comes from the stable of a company that also runs the McDonald outlets in Pakistan has correctly captured the gravity of the brazen act the Tehrik-e-Taliban of Pakistan have indulged  in. Kidnappings are not new to Pakistan particularly in its tribal belt. But ‘picking up’ people minutes after they met the army chief of the country is a first ever such act. It threatens govt’s shaky effort to convince the Americans and the IDPs alike that South Waziristan is safe because of the on-going offensive.

The victims, some of them students met General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in the Ladha and Makeen areas of South Waziristan when he was in the area on Dec 7 to give a pep talk and see some development projects. He had held out the offer of rehabilitating the militants. Soon after he left, the TTP invited them to the South-North Waziristan border with promises of food rations and grabbed them. They belong to the Mehsud tribe, which dominates the senior Taliban ranks. When exactly the kidnapping took place is unclear. But the news  did not ‘break’ till Dec 27. that much is sure.

TTP spokesperson Azam Tariq has warned that their courts would decide on the punishment of these ‘guests’. The verdict could come soon. If the government manages to strike a deal with TTP, as it does quite often with the restive tribal war lords, the victims would be able to spend their New Year with their families. Otherwise they would remain languishing in the TTP holes awaiting their turn for execution, which is the general punishment.

As Azam Tariq said, the kidnapping is a master stroke to assert their presence in South Waziristan and to warn the 400,000 Mehsud refugees against returning to their homes from Dera Ismail Khan where they are housed in temporary structures. In a telephonic interview to Associated Press, he also claimed that the TTP has seven courts and 22 offices in the area.

If his claim is true, there is no official contradiction from either Rawalpindi or Peshawar, the question arises as to what the army units, said to be 30,000 strong, have achieved during their one-year old campaign.

The kidnapping serves a purpose for the Kayani army. One the one hand it can plead helplessness in the face of tribal fury and on the other hand it can put pressure for delivery of weapons on its wish list. Coming as it did so soon after President Obama’s Af-Pak policy review, the unmistakable impression is that kidnapping is a willingly inflicted wound. Will it silence the Pentagon critics and ward off pressure for an offensive in the belt along the border with Afghanistan? 

We will know by the time New Year dawns. .