16 June Media Summary

Early Bird summary

Tuesday’s Early Bird leads with an article from the Washington Post, echoed by USA Today and the Christian Science Monitor, reporting that U.S. combat troops will leave all Iraqi cities by their scheduled deadline of the end of this month, including Mosul, which remains the country's most dangerous urban area, the commander of U.S. forces said Monday.American combat troops must pull back from cities by June 30 under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact that took effect this year. But Gen. Ray Odierno, the American commander, said this year that troops might remain in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul because of continuing security concerns.

The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post both report that U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal formally assumed command Monday of American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Afghanistan, taking charge at one of the most violent junctures of the 8-year-old conflict.In addition to confronting an increasingly powerful Taliban insurgency and presiding over the largest American troop buildup of the war, the four-star general faces rising Afghan anger over civilian deaths and injuries in the course of the fighting.McChrystal, speaking at the heavily fortified headquarters of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, described the safeguarding of civilian lives as central to the foreign forces' mission in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration will order the Navy to hail and request permission to inspect North Korean ships at sea suspected of carrying arms or nuclear technology, but will not board them by force, senior administration officials said Monday, according to the New York Times.The new effort to intercept North Korean ships, and track them to their next port, where Washington will press for the inspections they refused at sea, is part of what the officials described as “vigorous enforcement” of the United Nations Security Council resolution approved Friday.The planned American action stops just short of the forced inspections that North Korea has said that it would regard as an act of war. Still, the administration’s plans, if fully executed, would amount to the most confrontational approach taken by the United States in dealing with North Korea in years, and carries a risk of escalating tensions at a time when North Korea has been carrying out missile and nuclear tests.

The Washington Post reports that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak flew to Washington for talks on Tuesday with President Obama, from whom Lee is expected to seek a written promise of continued U.S. nuclear protection.The United States has maintained a nuclear umbrella over South Korea since the Korean War, and it periodically reaffirms that protection, although not at the level of a White House statement.North Korea tested its second nuclear bomb last month, triggering worldwide condemnation and cranking up anxiety in Seoul. When the U.N. Security Council imposed new sanctions on the North for that test, the government of Kim Jong Il quickly responded in the fist-shaking manner that has characterized its behavior this year.

Pakistan has been fighting militants for weeks in a green valley north of the capital, the New York Times reports. Even as that battle is fought, it is now gearing up for the most decisive test of the war, in the rugged western mountains that are the Taliban’s prime sanctuary.The area, South Waziristan, presents the toughest challenge for Pakistan in its fight to curb its growing insurgency. It is home to Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan’s enemy No. 1, who leads the Taliban here and has engineered dozens of suicide bombings in recent years.Mr. Mehsud now has thousands of fighters entrenched in mountain terrain that is nearly impossible for conventional armies to navigate, and past efforts to capture him, most recently last year, have failed.What is more, Pakistan is fighting the Taliban in several areas already and has committed 22,000 troops to its campaign in the valley, called Swat. While military officials say troop strength is not a problem, more forces will be needed to hold newly taken areas, which have gone unpatrolled for years.

The New York Times also reports that hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central Tehran on Monday to protest Iran’s disputed presidential election in an extraordinary show of defiance from a broad cross section of society, even as the nation’s supreme leader called for a formal review of results he had endorsed two days earlier.Having mustered the largest antigovernment demonstrations since the 1979 revolution, and defying an official ban, protesters began to sense the prospect — however slight at the moment — that the leadership’s firm backing of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had wavered.The massive outpouring was mostly peaceful. But violence erupted after dark when protesters surrounded and attempted to set fire to the headquarters of the Basij volunteer militia, which is associated with the Revolutionary Guards, according to news agency reports. At least one man was killed, and several others were injured in that confrontation.On Tuesday, Radio Payam, a state-owned station, reported that seven people were killed and others were wounded Monday night when “several thugs” tried to attack a military post and vandalize public property in the same area as the demonstration earlier in the day, according to Agence France-Presse.

A report broadcast on CNN says that U.S. commanders in the Persian Gulf, in the Middle East have received a classified message during this election time frame in Iran, warning them to exercise prudence, caution and restraint. For a full transcript of the report, follow this link.
National Journal’s Congress Daily PM reports that the Defense Department needs to better coordinate its cybersecurity operations but has no interest in replacing the Homeland Security Department as the primary agency for protecting federal civilian networks, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said today.The Pentagon's second-highest ranking official said his department is considering a plan to create a cybersecurity command, which would serve as the main point for protecting military (.mil) networks and organizing offensive cyberwarfare capabilities.

A military judge has ordered a news reporter to obey a subpoena and testify in the case of a Camp Pendleton Marine who is facing a court-martial for an interview he gave over the handling of classified material, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.In a 12-page ruling released yesterday, Cmdr. Kevin O'Neil said the rights of the accused, Pvt. Gary Maziarz, to a fair trial outweigh the First Amendment rights claimed by Rick Rogers, a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune.Maziarz is facing a charge of willfully disobeying a direct order. Prosecutors say he was under orders not to discuss his role in a ring of Marines who passed top-secret intelligence files about individuals under surveillance to a Los Angeles civilian law enforcement agency.In 2007, Maziarz pleaded guilty to mishandling classified material and theft of government property, and was released from the brig last July. Afterward, Rogers interviewed him for a report that was published in November.

GovExec.com reports that a New Hampshire Democrat is set to introduce an amendment to the fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill requiring the Pentagon to return employees covered under the National Security Personnel System to the General Schedule within one year unless the Defense secretary can demonstrate improvements to NSPS, union officials said on Monday.The amendment by Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., would apply similar restrictions to the pay-for-performance system that covers Defense Department intelligence employees, the union representatives said. Shea-Porter's office could not immediately be reached for comment.The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the National Federation of Federal Employees and the American Federation of Government Employees confirmed that Shea-Porter planned to introduce the amendment on Tuesday during a House Armed Services Committee markup of the authorization bill.

Media summary

1. Leading newspaper headlines: The papers continue to give top billing to Iran, where hundreds of thousands of protesters ignored a ban and marched through central Tehran to protest the result of Friday's presidential election. (Slate Magazine)
2. USJFCOM creates program for small unit excellence: U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) is creating a National Program For Small Unit Excellence in response to the demands of the Afghanistan strategy that emphasizes small high- performing ground units, and how the future joint force will operate, a command official said. (Defense Daily)
3. Pentagon to probe cyberdefense in QDR: The Quadrennial Defense Review will address cybersecurity in a variety of ways as the threat of network attacks against the Pentagon grows, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said Monday. The department faces attacks against military and defense networks that could disrupt military networks, Lynn said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington on the Defense Department's role in cybersecurity. (Inside Defense)
4. Troops mass for onslaught on Taliban in ‘bin Laden’s mountain stronghold’: Pakistan was mobilizing troops and artillery Monday to launch a massive offensive against Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in his mountain stronghold of South Waziristan — also believed to be the hiding place of Osama bin Laden. (London Times)

Leading newspaper headlines

The papers continue to give top billing to Iran, where hundreds of thousands of protesters ignored a ban and marched through central Tehran to protest the result of Friday's presidential election. It was the largest unofficial demonstration since the 1979 Islamic revolution and came mere hours after the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered an investigation into allegations of fraud in the voting process. While most of the protests were largely peaceful, the day ended in bloodshed when members of a pro-government militia fired into a crowd. The Los Angeles Times catches late-breaking news that Iran's state radio reported today that seven people were killed after protesters tried to "attack a military site." The Wall Street Journal notes unconfirmed reports from "a student-run news service" that five students were killed Sunday night in raids at Tehran University carried out by pro-government militias. The New York Times and LAT front breathtaking pictures of the "broad river of people" (NYT) that took to the streets yesterday and marched slowly from Revolution Square to Freedom Square. The Washington Post points out that there were reports of protests and clashes with police in other cities besides Tehran.
USA Today goes with a photograph from Iran at the top of its front page, but dedicates its lead spot to President Obama's speech before the American Medical Association to garner support for his efforts to overhaul the nation's health system. Obama took aim at those who say he wants the government to take over health care by saying that they "are not telling the truth." He made sure to emphasize that a public coverage plan would not be "a Trojan horse for a single-payer system."
In addition to calling for an investigation of the alleged electoral fraud, Ayatollah Khamenei also tried to calm protesters by meeting with Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main opposition candidate. But opposition supporters weren't buying it and saw Khamenei's moves as simply an effort to buy time and hope the protests die down naturally. Mousavi's wife had told supporters that the march had been canceled because they expected swift repression from government forces. But people gathered anyway, and many more quickly joined when it became clear the police weren't going to get involved. Mousavi made a brief appearance and told the crowd he didn't have much faith in the independence of the Guardian Council's investigation into the voting.
It seems the NYT and WP reporters may have been at different sides of the huge march. While the NYT takes pains to emphasize that the "people marched in silence" and "the crowd quickly hushed" anyone who belted out an occasional shout or chant, the WP describes it as a rowdy affair, with "ecstatic" crowds, and lots of chanting and clapping. Regardless, the "diverse gathering refuted the charge … that Mousavi's support was drawn from the wealthy and educated in northern Tehran," notes the LAT. The marchers were from different generations and social classes, and there were even some families with children.
Deadly violence erupted after dark when members of the Basij, a pro-government militia group, fired onto a crowd from a rooftop. The WP says it's not clear whether the shooting began after the crowd threatened to storm Basij's headquarters. But after the shooting, protesters set fire to part of the building and several motorcycles. A spokesman for the Guardian Council urged Iranians to be patient while they investigated the claims of election fraud. More trouble could be in store today. Mousavi's supporters have called for a general strike today, and the LAT notes that a pro-government rally was announced for 4 p.m. today at the same site where an opposition rally is set to begin an hour later. Early morning wire stories report that the spokesman for the Guardian Council announced it will re-count some ballot boxes from the election.
President Obama, in his first public comments on the situation, said he was "deeply troubled" by the violence in Iran. "I can't state definitively one way or another what happened with respect to the election," Obama said. "But what I can say is that there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed."
In a front-page analysis, the NYT states that Khamenei's move to quickly declare President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of the election involved "a rare break from a long history of cautious moves." Although there seems little doubt that the Council of Guardians will simply uphold Ahmadinejad's victory, by calling for the investigation Khamenei "has opened a serious fissure in the face of Islamic rule and one that may prove impossible to patch over." Khamenei is often described as careful but "now faces a nearly impossible choice," says the NYT. "If he lets the demonstrations swell, it could well change the system of clerical rule. If he uses violence to stamp them out, the myth of a popular mandate for the Islamic revolution will die."
So, what about the results? Any chance Ahmadinejad actually won the election? The Post looks into this question and says that while there are "many signs of manipulation or outright fraud" in the election results, "the case for a rigged outcome is far from ironclad." The ballots were certainly counted very quickly, and at several polling places representatives of opposition candidates weren't allowed to oversee the initial counting. "There are suspicious elements here, but there's no solid evidence of fraud," one expert said.
As Obama tried to get the American Medical Association on his side, it also became clear that the plans for health care currently being discussed would not only cost a lot of money but might not even solve the problem of the uninsured. In a front-page piece, the NYT notes that a plan that was presented by Democratic leaders in Congress would cost at least $1 trillion over 10 years and only reduce the number of uninsured by 16 million people, leaving around 36 million people uninsured. Lawmakers are trying to figure out how to pay for this, and some think there's no option but to increase taxes. House Democrats are considering a tax on soft drinks, and the long-discussed idea of creating a value-added tax is also apparently on the table.
The LAT fronts new documents made public yesterday that reveal Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind, said during hearings at Guantanamo that he gave the CIA false information just so they would stop applying harsh interrogation techniques. "I make up stories," Mohammed said as he described how interrogators asked him about Osama bin Laden's location. "Where is he? I don't know. Then, he torture me," Mohammed recounted. "Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area.' " In his statements, Mohammed also gives the impression that he said some people belonged to al-Qaida even though he didn't know, just to avoid abusive interrogation sessions. Of course, there's no way to corroborate anything Mohammed said, but he is one of the detainees who we now know was repeatedly subjected to waterboarding.
Meanwhile, the WP highlights that another detainee who was repeatedly subjected to waterboarding, Abu Zubaida, apparently had to endure abusive interrogations because the CIA thought he was someone else. In transcripts from a 2007 hearing, Abu Zubaida said his jailers told him they thought he was al-Qaida's No. 3 but later realized he was a glorified nobody. "They told me, 'Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,' " Abu Zubaida said. Although he was described as "al-Qaida's chief of operations" in 2002, officials later came to the conclusion that he was just a "fixer" and wasn't even a member of al-Qaida. Abu Zubaida said he had to go through "months of suffering and torture" based on that false assumption. He was waterboarded 83 times.
The NYT hears word that the Obama administration will order the Navy to inspect North Korean ships that are suspected of carrying forbidden materials. The Navy won't be boarding the ships by force, but if permission is refused, the ship would be reported to the Security Council and the Navy would track the ship to its next port and continue pressuring for inspectors to be allowed on board. North Korea has previously said that any forced inspections would be seen as an act of war. If the administration carries out this plan, it "would amount to the most confrontational approach taken by the United States in dealing with North Korea in years," notes the NYT.

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USJFCOM Creates National Program For Small Unit Excellence
By Ann Roosevelt
Defense Daily
June 16, 2009

U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) is creating a National Program For Small Unit Excellence in response to the demands of the Afghanistan strategy that emphasizes small high- performing ground units, and how the future joint force will operate, a command official said. "We feel a very, very strong moral obligation," to raise the small unit standard of excellence, Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, commander of the Joint Warfighting Center (JWC) at JFCOM, said at a recent Pentagon roundtable.

The new National Program for Small Unit Excellence acknowledges that considering the complexities of the environment and the way the joint force will fight in future conflicts, "there is a great need for decentralization of command and control at the lowest capable level of empowerment of decision making at the small unit level and small units who are completely adaptable to aggregate against conventional threats and seamlessly disaggregate against irregular or hybrid threats," Kamiya said. While current forces have a good foundation of adaptability, the new program is looking at ways to improve how dispersed units have an effect, a presence, beyond their size, he said.

At the May Joint Warfighting Conference, JFCOM Commander, Marine Gen. James Mattis, said, "We are going to have to take small units and make them much more capable as joint users. No Army squad on the ground should not be able to draw down joint ISR. They should all be able to get joint fires overhead, whether it be a Navy plane or an Army helicopter or a NATO nation's F/A-18. Whatever it is, we have got to be able to make high performing small units that include joint intel and fires because we are going to disperse them more widely."

Kamiya said, in Iraq and Afghanistan, small units have sustained 89 percent of all those killed in action. Additionally, the preponderance of the data shows that from 1950 to the present, four of five killed in action have been infantry, and half of those have been trying to find the enemy. As well, the Afghanistan strategy relies on small, high-performing ground units, to include rifle squads and platoons and special operations personnel.

Raising the bar on small units has to be "nested" with the Department of Homeland Security, which would be the portal to law enforcement and the wider national first responder community, Kamiya said. "We're very, very hopeful that this partnership we have with the Department of Homeland Security will result in benefits both to the military and to the first responder community."

There's a strong operational demand for highly skilled and prepared tactical small units conducting distributed operations, said Kamiya, who saw it first hand during a year spent in Afghanistan commanding Combined Joint Task Force 76 from March 2005 to February 2006. "Jointness is occurring at lower and lower levels," he said. "The capabilities that young squad leaders and platoon leaders and company commanders have at their disposal today were unthinkable during my formative years in the military."

These considerations are not solely for the military, but a growing part of the complexities first responders face. The demands on small units are growing due to the nature of irregular or hybrid war in which small units operate in and among populations, something the special operations forces have always done.

JFCOM Deputy Commander Vice Adm. Robert Harward said at the May conference, "We're working to develop small, highly skilled, not specialized units, which are adaptive and flexible, where we invest in individuals, as we've done in the SOF community. We're doing that now with general purpose forces to have the flexibility to operate in all these realms."

Both Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, and Mattis have written and testified about the requirement for high-performing small units. The program concept was born in late March, followed by the designation of a small number of JWC personnel to start setting up the organization. Additionally, a series of mini- conferences were held, culminating with a Small Unit Excellence Conference April 28-20.

The mini-forums drew nationally recognized experts from conference co-sponsor DHS, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force and academia. Experts from multiple disciplines examined such things as in extremis leadership and decision-making, resiliency--and the science behind such areas.

Among conference speakers was University of Southern California Football Coach Pete Carroll, who drew analogies between military small units and the physical, intellectual and skills needed by football players to be an effective national championship team. He also drew attention to the fact that the team and special teams consist of about 11 people-- close to the size of an infantry squad or a special forces ODA team. Putting small unit excellence in a different context really opened a lot of eyes, Kamiya said.

The conference generated 400 ideas that, in turn, generated four priority focus areas where the program "must" exert intellectual and resource energy to solve, and work is under way on all of those areas, he said.

- Cross-community integration: identifying activities across the board, correlating and rationalizing them, and develop shared knowledge and understanding at forums with published outcomes, and identify agreed upon gaps and work to close them.

For example, nobody knew about an Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) Study on Adaptability, or a West Point Study on small unit leadership, but now the wider community is aware of both.

- Collaborative tools and knowledge management: assess web-based technology that allow cross-community collaboration and a centralized or connected data/knowledge repository, and provide it to the community by the end of fiscal year 2010.

Here, the program is studying a U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) tool known as Starfish, a knowledge management tool that might potentially be a building block for further work.

- Assessment and Measurement: assess research on psychological and physical stimuli, and technologies, test technologies to see how they could improve small unit immersive training, objectively measure effectiveness and quantify return on investment, and prepare to transition capabilities to where they're most needed starting in FY '11.

- Spotlight studies on group behavior, assess existing research, identify gaps and prioritize program sponsorship to fill those gaps.

In this area, Army Training and Doctrine Command is conducting a cognitive performance group study of redeployed 101st soldiers, and OSD is doing a collaborative study with the Australian army on complex adaptive systems.

As JFCOM is the joint force integrator, Kamiya said, "I would hope, that given the dots that ought to be connected across the entire community and disciplines, given the body of knowledge that will be able to be added to the body of knowledge already existing in the services and across academia and the sciences that it will provide enough of a compelling argument to cause change and adaptation across the community in how we cultivate and develop our small units.

Such knowledge would be translated to a concept that is tested and validated and then transitioned and flowed into the framework of doctrine, organization, training, leader development, materiel, personnel and facilities. It's a continual cycle of informing and adaptation, Kamiya said. "I see the program as an enabler vice a competitor for resources or whatever...It's not about ownership, it's about shared knowledge and understanding."

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Pentagon To Probe Cyberdefense In QDR As Attacks On Military Computers Rise
By Fawzia Sheikh
Inside Defense
June 15, 2009

The Quadrennial Defense Review will address cybersecurity in a variety of ways as the threat of network attacks against the Pentagon grows, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said Monday. The department faces attacks against military and defense networks that could disrupt military networks, Lynn said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington on the Defense Department's role in cybersecurity. Pentagon computers are “probed thousands of times a day” and “scanned millions of times a day,” he added, noting that the frequency and sophistication of these attacks are increasing “exponentially.”

Last year, DOD experienced one of the most significant attacks on its military networks, he told the audience. Malicious software infected several thousand computers and forced U.S. troops and defense personnel to give up their external memory devices and thumb drives, “changing the way they use computers every day,” he remarked.

Although such attacks have not cost lives, “they are costing an increasing amount of money,” Lynn said. “In a recent six-month period alone last year, the Defense Department spent more than $100 million defending its networks.” The government recently completed a 60-day cyber review, led by White House cybersecurity chief Melissa Hathaway, of the government's computer infrastructure.

Because the country as a whole is unprepared for cyber challenges, network defense will play a central role in the QDR, Lynn said. During the review, DOD will assess current capabilities against requirements and make recommendations for the future. Lynn also said the United States needs doctrine to govern “how we protect cyberspace as a domain, how our forces are designed and trained to protect our networks.”

The QDR will look at three types of activities involving war-gaming and scenario-playing, he said. “One is just the kind of conventional military scenarios, and we've added a cyber component to those so that we understand what the implications of Georgia and other harbingers of what we think the future might bring,” he said. Last year, Russia launched an attack on the country in which Georgian government computers were hit.

“Second we have a red team that's led by Andy Marshall, the director of net assessment at the Pentagon, and. . . Gen. Jim Mattis,” the head of U.S. Joint Forces Command, he said. “And they are doing a red team analysis of those same scenarios and may have an even heavier emphasis on cyber scenarios.”

DefenseAlert first reported on the red team analysis on May 13. Moreover, the Pentagon is consulting its own cyber experts to think about some “stand-alone cyber scenarios” that may be incorporated into the review, he said.

However, he said, DOD is pursuing a number of other initiatives prior to the completion of the QDR. As an example, the fiscal year 2010 budget will triple the number of graduating cyber experts from 80 to 250 a year, Lynn told the audience.

In addition, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency plans to develop a cyber security range in the next fiscal year that would allow government agencies to test cyberdefense scenarios, he noted. The Pentagon is also still considering the creation of a sub-unified cyber command under U.S. Strategic Forces Command, Lynn said.

“As of today, [Secretary] Gates has not made the final decision on this command,” he said. “Such a command would not represent the militarization of cyberspace. It would in no way be about the Defense Department trying to take over the government's cybersecurity effort.” Gates is still “evaluating proposals,” Lynn said, while the Joint Staff is “working out the details of how this command would work and what the reporting relationships are.”

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Troops Mass For Onslaught On Taliban In 'bin Laden's Mountain Stronghold'
By Jeremy Page and Rehmat Mehsud
London Times
June 16, 2009

Pakistan was mobilizing troops and artillery Monday to launch a massive offensive against Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in his mountain stronghold of South Waziristan — also believed to be the hiding place of Osama bin Laden. Military officials told The Times that the Government had ordered the attack and the military was pounding Mr. Mehsud’s territory with heavy artillery and airstrikes and negotiating alliances with rival tribal leaders in preparation for a ground assault. They also said that the army — already fighting the Taliban in Swat and several other parts of northwestern Pakistan — was engaged in its biggest military operation since the 1971 war that split Pakistan and created Bangladesh.

The army has given no schedule for the new attack, but locals reported seeing troop columns moving towards South Waziristan. Analysts say that they expect the army to capitalize on its high levels of public support and launch its offensive within the next few weeks. “For the last few days, thousands of security forces with reinforcements of tanks and artillery are being shifted there,” one local intelligence official said. “It’s the first time in history we have seen and heard about such a big military movement into South Waziristan.”

Zahiruddin Khan, 25, a shop owner in the town of Tank, just outside South Waziristan, said he had seen army convoys heading towards the region and many families fleeing in the opposite direction in the past few days. That will be welcome news for the United States, which has been pushing the Pakistani Army for years to take on Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters sheltering in North and South Waziristan, both of which border Afghanistan.

Some concerns have been raised that the new assault might overstretch the army before it has consolidated recent gains in the offensive it launched against the Taliban in Swat in late April. Aid workers also worry that it will create another 500,000 refugees, adding to the 2.5 million who have already fled fighting in the northwest in the last year. “If that happens you have the makings of a very serious problem indeed,” said Shaheen Chughtai, of Oxfam in Pakistan.

The Government gave the order to attack Mr. Mehsud after he claimed responsibility for a spate of suicide bombings in revenge for the Swat operation. “Baitullah Mehsud is the root cause of all evils,” said Owais Ghani, the Governor of North West Frontier Province. Major-General Attar Abbas, the army spokesman, said that the exact timing of the operation, the number of troops and other details were still being worked out.

Military sources said that the aim would be to kill or capture Mr. Mehsud and his key lieutenants as they posed the greatest threat to Pakistan. Mr. Mehsud, who has a $5 million (£3 million) U.S. bounty on his head, is also blamed for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister and late wife of Asif Ali Zardari, the President.

Mr. Mehsud leads Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan — also known as the Pakistani Taliban — and is believed to have 10,000 to 20,000 men under his command, mostly from the Mehsud tribe. Under U.S. pressure, the army has launched several offensives against him and other militant leaders in North and South Waziristan since 2004, but each has ended in a short-lived peace deal.

When the army attacked Mr. Mehsud last year it stopped because of fears of civilian casualties and because he had surrounded a fort with about 300 Pakistani troops inside. The army is also hoping that the U.S. will provide night vision equipment for its fighter jets and attack helicopters in time for the operation. With or without that support, analysts say that the fighting in South Waziristan will be far fiercer than in Swat, as the former has been controlled by the militants for most of the past eight years.

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