00:00

CAMPBELL: Islamabad looks as vibrant as ever, but even the capital is on high alert. This entire country is under attack from the inside. I’m on my way to a military hospital to see some of the victims.

00:08

Patients in hospital

00:24

These soldiers were sent to the heart of a conflict that’s been largely hidden from the world. They’ve come back profoundly damaged and disabled.

00:31

MAJOR DR MUHAMMAD ALI: “Well most of the patients we are receiving at Armed Forces Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine are coming from the western borders of Pakistan where the war on terror is in progress.

00:42

Dr Ali

The mine blast injuries are the most common causes which they are having in those areas as they are deployed there”.

00:57

Dr Ali with amputee patients

CAMPBELL: Major Dr Muhammad Ali gets new amputees to treat every week.

01:03

MAJOR DR MUHAMMAD ALI: “As you have seen, one of the patients here, he has got three limb amputations – that is one above elbow, and bilateral trans-femoral amputations – that is above knee amputation. They are pretty tough men and at every stage of life I personally learn so many things from them, at how motivated and how robust they are

01:17

Dr Ali

that even with this challenge they are living a successful life”.

01:38

Amputees in gym

CAMPBELL: In the past nine years more than 5,000 Pakistani soldiers have been killed and nearly 9,000 wounded fighting militants on the western border. Some of the enemy are Afghan and Arab fanatics who fled from Afghanistan, but most are their own people – Pakistanis inspired by the foreign militants to kill, maim and bomb their fellow countrymen.

01:42

Amputee soldier

AMPUTEE SOLDIER: “I have lost my leg, but I am ready to sacrifice for the country. I am ready to fight again. I will serve in the army and we will defeat the criminals. I am ready to sacrifice my life for the country”.

02:13

News footage

Music

02:33

CAMPBELL: The victims aren’t just soldiers. There are nearly daily attacks on civilians, like this July bombing of a police graduation ceremony live on TV.

02:39

Stills of Pakistani Taliban

The main culprits are the Pakistani Taliban. They’re an offshoot of the Afghan Taliban and even more ruthless. For ten years Pakistan’s foremost expert on extremism, Ahmed Rashid has warned of their rise.

AHMED RASHID: “From being a very small group controlling a small area they have expanded.

02:54

Rashid. Super:
Ahmed Rashid
Author

They now have enlisted the support of militant groups in Karachi, in Punjab, in Sindh, Kashmiri groups who are fighting the Indians in Kashmir. There is now a full scale extremist movement in Pakistan that is trying to overthrow the State”.

03:15

Aerials. Waziristan

CAMPBELL: The inspiration and agents of some of the worst acts of terrorism inhabit these remote landscapes – in a place called Waziristan. According to US intelligence, even the Bali bombings that killed 88 Australians can be traced back to this frontier.

03:33

Driving shots

03:57

Pakistan’s porous border with Afghanistan is wide open to smugglers and terrorists. Since 2002 it’s been the real home of al Qaeda and the Taliban. They simply relocated here after the US-led invasion.

[travelling in car] “While the world has been focussed on Iraq and Afghanistan,

04:00

Campbell piece to camera in car

Pakistan has been fighting an even costlier war in its own territory. This border region we’re heading to is normally off-limits to most Pakistanis let alone foreigners, but we’ve been given unprecedented access to go inside Pakistan’s war on the enemy within”.

04:21

North-West Frontier GVs/Campbell in car

Music

04:40

CAMPBELL:  We head west through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province British colonialists called the North-West Frontier. It’s the end of Pakistan proper.

04:47

Music

04:56

Pashtun men

CAMPBELL:  Beyond here is a kind of no-man’s land called the tribal agencies. Since colonial times, Pashtun tribesmen here were allowed to run their own affairs, but since the US invasion of Afghanistan, they’ve been taken over by militants.

05:00

Barbed wire

Music

05:16

Rashid

AHMED RASHID: “In the tribal areas half the population have fled, not so much because of the army but because of the Taliban. They hate the Taliban, they’re scared of the Taliban and they fled and they’ve… some have fled as far as Karachi and Dubai in the Gulf, others have fled to refugee camps just outside the tribal areas”.

05:22

Setting off with soldiers

CAMPBELL: It’s taken months for us to get permission to travel to the tribal belt. The army has agreed to take us to a part it says it’s liberated, but we have to travel in a heavily-armed convoy with two mounted machine guns. The army will also call the shots on what we can film.

05:42

Our destination is the tribal agency of South Waziristan. In 2009, under intense US pressure, Pakistan sent in the army to clear out the Taliban. Soldiers fought village by village and mountain by mountain. Many Taliban were killed but many more simply retreated just beyond the army’s reach into a forbidding wilderness.

06:05

Campbell walks with Colonel Hussain

COLONEL HUSSAIN: “There’s an operation basically in a location which is overlooking some of the approaches, which can be used by the terrorists”.

CAMPBELL: Colonel Hussain is one of the frontline commanders trying to hold on to this hard-won territory, but the terrain gives a clear advantage to insurgents.

06:35

COLONEL HUSSAIN: “Be careful. If you fall here, it’s at the cost of something, so be very, very careful”.

CAMPBELL: “So this must have been incredibly difficult terrain to fight in, when you tried to take these hills”.

06:51

Mountains, river running through

COLONEL HUSSAIN: “It’s very difficult. Life is very difficult, at the post. You know, the people fetch water from downstream”.

CAMPBELL: “Yeah...

07:03

Campbell walks with Colonel Hussain

wow”.

COLONEL HUSSAIN: “It’s really very tough – but you know it’s part of a soldier’s life”.

CAMPBELL: The rugged landscape isn’t the only challenge.

07:12

Mountains

The enemy retains a home-ground advantage – they grew up here.

“They would have known this area very well, the Taliban... the locals.

07:21

Campbell with Colonel Hussain

COLONEL HUSSAIN: “Yes, obviously, the Taliban - they’re locals from this area so anyone who has been, you know, grazing his animals here for thirty years… he knows each and every stone of this area”.

07:30

Soldiers drill for attack

CAMPBELL: On windswept mountaintops like this, they scan the area for Taliban and drill for attacks.

07:42

Campbell with Colonel Hussain

COLONEL HUSSAIN: “So I just wanted to show you the wilderness of this area, you know the mountains, the valleys and you know virtually it’s not possible to hold each and every peak, so you have to have domination at the top from where you can see different places where it is emerging and then you can observe the moment”.

07:53

CAMPBELL: “Big job!”

COLONEL HUSSAIN: “And it’s a difficult one”.

08:18

Music

08:22

Pakistani Taliban in snow

CAMPBELL: These are some of the men they’re fighting. A local journalist filmed this rare footage in winter of the Pakistani Taliban moving secretly though south Waziristan. They’re allies of the Afghan Taliban,

08:31

Taliban stills

but they have their own leaders and agenda. Unlike the Afghans, they’re not trying to rid the country of foreigners - they want to replace their own government with a Sharia dictatorship.

08:45

Waziristan Taliban

Music

08:56

Mehsud

HEKIMULLAH MEHSUD: “Democracy is part of the infidels, because it was created by the Jews. It was created to divide Muslims”.

09:08

Taliban in snow

Music

09:19

CAMPBELL: Hekimullah Mehsud is one of their most powerful leaders.

HEKIMULLAH MEHSUD: “I can tell you that the Pakistan government is a slave to Americans and they worship Obama.

Mehsud

Pakistanis obey Obama and Americans, like we obey our God”.

09:34

Armed soldiers on truck

CAMPBELL: South Waziristan is now under complete military control. It feels like a wasteland.

09:47

Abandoned village

Most of the villages are still deserted. Civilians were ordered to leave so the army could launch its operation. The few men who’ve been given permission to return have had to surrender their traditional weapons.

09:58

The only women we see are fully veiled. Army minders order us not to film. In this culture, women can’t show their faces to strangers.

10:12

Music

10:31

Campbell in car

CAMPBELL: Waziristan, now divided into a north and south agency, has a long history of militancy. The British colonialists had little control here beyond the forts they built along the road to Afghanistan. They had to bribe tribal elders, called Maliks, to allow their soldiers safe passage.

10:35

Campbell piece to camera

“What I find really striking about this place is that even the villages are built as fortresses. There are two main tribes here, the Mehsuds and the Wazirs and historically when they haven’t been united fighting outsiders, they’ve been fighting each other. This is a land where war has traditionally been a part of life, where life is governed by an iron tribal code, and where offences of honour have to be settled in blood. It’s no wonder the British, who had the misfortune of trying to conquer Waziristan, called it Hell’s Doorknocker”.

11:03

Waziristan villagers

Music

11:37

CAMPBELL:  Like the British, Pakistan has decided it can’t defeat the militants by force alone. It’s begun a second campaign for hearts and minds.

11:41

New technical college/Craftsmen

The army is rebuilding much of what it destroyed in the fighting. It’s constructed a new technical college alongside new homes and cottage enterprises. The aim is to create jobs so these young people aren’t tempted to join the Taliban.

11:56

Market

But when we visit one of the army built markets, the mood is more resentful than grateful.

12:16

Campbell walks with shopkeeper

Some reckon the army’s operation against the Taliban did more harm than good.

12:22

Shopkeeper

SHOPKEEPER: The Taliban that were here were all Pakistanis. Even at that time the situation was good – it was not bad – but when the operation was done, the situation was worse. All our homes were destroyed during the operation”.

12:33

Man at market

CAMPBELL: “Were you scared of the Taliban when they were here?”

TRIBAL MAN: “Nobody was afraid because they were all locals, and all were Pakistanis. They were locals and nobody was afraid. Everything was open… markets…everyone was roaming around as normal. Everything was normal”.

CAMPBELL: “So when you came back

12:56

and saw everything was destroyed, how did you feel?”

TRIBAL MAN: “When we came back –

13:14

the media doesn’t know about it – but the reality is that everything was destroyed, everything was finished. Schools are still mostly closed and teachers are absent. Three or four years have already been wasted for them. Everyone knows about this, how much time has been wasted for these children”.

CAMPBELL: Perhaps the Taliban

13:18

People at market

went out of their way to keep these locals onside. Or maybe people are still scared of Taliban retaliation. Surrounded by soldiers, it’s hard to gauge what anyone really thinks. Inside this store, the merchant Abdul Ghafoor assures us all is fine.

13:43

Campbell in Abdul’s market shop

“So are there any problems now?”

14:01

ABDUL GHAFOOR: “There is no problem. Life is good, and we are very thankful to God. We have been helped, the army also helped – and we’re having a very good life, no problems”.

14:03

CAMPBELL: “So what was it like when the Taliban were here?”

14:18

ABDUL GHAFOOR: “They were also good days”.

CAMPBELL: “Really, why were they good days?”

ABDUL GHAFOOR: “Good days”.

CAMPBELL: “Why were they good days when the Taliban were here?”

ABDUL GHAFOOR: “We didn’t face any problems”.

14:20

CAMPBELL: “Have there been any bad times here?”

14:34

ABDUL GHAFOOR: “Never”.

INTERPRETER: “No never”. [laughing]

CAMPBELL: “Life is good!

14:36

How is business? It’s good is it? I thought it would be”.

[laughter]

We leave just as onlookers start joking about kidnapping us, something the Taliban did often for money.

14:40

MAN IN SHOP: “Shall we sell them? Shall we sell them?” [crowd laughs]

SHOP KEEPER: “One of them can speak Pashto, so be quiet. They are laughing, so let’s laugh too”.

14:56

Locals play cricket

Music

15:12

CAMPBELL: It’s not surprising that the locals are unwilling to criticise the Taliban – there are sympathisers with a keen sense of hearing and there are fears the militants could return at any time. When they were here the Taliban didn’t hesitate to kill anyone who stood in their way, from tribal elders to local soldiers and police.

15:21

[on cricket field] “It’s relatively peaceful now but this place has seen some horrors. There used to be a fort bedside this cricket field

15:46

Campbell piece to camera on cricket field

and when the Taliban stormed it in 2008 they captured 38 soldiers and cut their heads off. Then they set up their headquarters in the school on the other side of the stadium. When the army re-took the fort a year later, 1200 people died in a single week. The war destroyed most of the village. The army’s now rebuilt it to try to lure people back but it’s going to be a long, slow process”.

15:53

Locals play cricket

Only a handful of villages have been repopulated. Most people are still living in camps or with relatives around Pakistan. But there is

16:23

Visit to school with Jennifer McKay

one striking improvement here. For the first time, girls are going to high school. The army has built a new school for girls up to the age of 18. It’s a surprising sight in an area where females are all but invisible.

16:31

An independent aid consultant, Australian Jennifer McKay, one of the few daring to come to this area, has been raising money to outfit it with textbooks and uniforms.

16:51

McKay. Super:
Jennifer McKay
Aid Consultant

JENNIFER MCKAY: “An exciting thing about this school is that despite what people think about girls’ education in Pakistan, particularly the tribal areas, is that the community here wants girls to go to school, so they donated the land for this school, the army built the school, and so a bunch of friends we’re helping fit it out”.

17:03

McKay with principal

CAMPBELL: Jennifer McKay first came to Pakistan in 2005 to help with earthquake relief and decided to stay on. She found hardly any outside aid was coming to Waziristan, partly because of negative perceptions that she says are wrong.

17:0

McKay

JENNIFER MCKAY: “I think what really keeps me here is the hospitality and generosity of the people. Even here in Waziristan the communities are extraordinarily welcoming, which wasn’t really what I expected”.

14:46

Girls at school

CAMPBELL: But it soon becomes apparent this is still a deeply conservative place.

18:01

McKay with principal

While the principal is happy to teach older girls, he doesn’t want us to film them.

JENNIFER MCKAY: [trying to convince principal] “It’s very special but it would be good to at least be able to show something of what is here because this is a very special school and so it’s a story that’s worth telling. It’s one that’s worth telling in pictures”.

CAMPBELL: “So it would be possible, we really need to have some pictures of just the young girls, the little children”.

18:07

Young girls file in

Finally, after long appeals from Jennifer McKay he allows us to see the youngest children.

JENNIFER MCKAY: “Education’s a critical part of peace building and stability. The country needs a lot of help with education anyway, a lot of schools are

18:34

Girls in school yard

quite deprived. But here in post conflict areas, education is really critical to, you know, countering extremism and just

18:56

McKay

generally the future prosperity and peace, so it’s a very useful investment, important investment.

CAMPBELL: “So it’s one way of keeping the Taliban at bay?”

JENNIFER MCKAY: “Yes it is, it is.

19:06

Girls learning alphabet

19:18

To educate girls is really important, because they bring up healthier children, they make sure that both their girls and boys go to school. So education whether it’s for boys or girls

19:23

McKay

plays an important role in keeping, yes, the Taliban at bay”.

19:35

Landscape at sunset

CAMPBELL: Most of the Taliban retreated across the mountain into North Waziristan, where they roam freely.

19:41

Journalist’s footage

19:50

This video footage filmed by a Pakistani journalist shows militants in control of the main city of Miranshah, while the army is hunkered down in a nearby fort. The government has so far been afraid to launch another big operation.

AHMED RASHID: “The big danger is that if

19:55

Rashid. Super:
Ahmed Rashid
Author

this continues indefinitely, the Taliban will become more powerful than the army”.

20:13

Taliban videos

Music

20:20

CAMPBELL: The Taliban even have a media studio in North Waziristan. It makes internet videos like this one teaching children to be suicide bombers. Pakistan’s now trying desperately to stop this insurgency. The irony is that it may have helped create it. For many years Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the ISI, secretly supported militants in Afghanistan. The aim was to make sure Pakistan had a compliant neighbour no matter which side won the war.

20:24

AHMED RASHID: “There’s been this double game that has gone on for many, many years about

21:01

Rashid

Pakistan supporting the NATO presence in Afghanistan and at the same time allowing the Afghan Taliban to operate against the NATO forces”.

21:07

CAMPBELL: “So by trying to enhance Pakistan’s security by supporting the Afghan Taliban, they’ve actually undermined their own security

21:18

because of the effect it’s had on the Pakistan Taliban?”

AHMED RASHID: “Exactly, exactly. I think that’s the best way of putting it. I mean the fact was -- and people like myself were warning, in my writings, you know, I have been warning the Pakistani Government since 2003, because I visited some of these training camps and I saw what the army and ISI were doing in 2003 and I wrote about this. And of course, you know, they didn’t like it but I said the more you do this - encourage the Taliban to attack in Afghanistan - the backlash is going to come on Pakistan, because these camps and this set-up and this radicalisation is all taking place in Pakistan with the help of Pakistani tribesmen who are then going to get radicalised and of course that’s exactly what happened. You had the growth of the Pakistani Taliban”.

21:25

Waziristan training camp

CAMPBELL: The US isn’t waiting for Pakistan’s permission to strike back. It’s using drones to attack Taliban bases like this Waziristan training camp. It was completely destroyed in a recent strike and this commander was killed, but each successful attack creates more enemies among the public.

22:16

Taliban operatives in de-radicalisation centre

There is one bright spot. Back in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, we were taken to meet some former Taliban operatives who the army captured. They’re being held in a special de-radicalisation centre outside the frontier city of Tank.

22:42

Waseem bricklaying

We were allowed to film here on condition we don’t show their faces in case the Taliban take revenge on them.

23:02

Waseem, who’s 22, was a civil engineering student when the Taliban recruited him two years ago.

23:13

Waseem interview

WASEEM: “They don’t come to college, they don’t do it openly, but they have places where they recruit. They tell people that Islam is facing danger and that a lot of atrocities and torture are being done against Muslims - and add more things to it. They try make people feel they should help – so they attract people to them”.

23:21

Inmates sewing

CAMPBELL: The inmates are learning new trades and getting religious re-education from anti-Taliban mullahs. Surrounded by soldiers, all tell us they now see the error of their ways.

23:55

Waseem interview

WASEEM: “We are all Muslims, so they showed us one side of the picture and we thought it was necessary to do jihad because I did not know the other side of the picture. Then when I came here the army people told us the other side of the picture and I think this is right”.

24:10

Aerials. Waziristan

Music

24:39

CAMPBELL: It’s hard to know who to believe, from the lowliest foot solider to the height of government. The army at least seems determined to fight the Taliban’s rise in any way it can, but the biggest challenge may be yet to come. By the end of the year, almost all the Coalition’s combat troops will leave Afghanistan. Militants on both sides of the border are waiting.

AHMED RASHID: “They’re preparing not to make peace but rather to escalate the war

24:51

Rashid

which they feel that they will be able to do in a better way once the western forces have left”.

25:23

Stills. Taliban

CAMPBELL: “So they see it almost as a retreat?”

AHMED RASHID: “Oh yes without a doubt. This is very similar to the circumstances in which the Soviets left Afghanistan”.

25:30

Training camp

CAMPBELL: The war isn’t over, It’s just starting its next phase.

25:40

Music

25:44

25:58