ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Militants forced to flee their havens in Pakistan’s mountainous tribal areas are establishing new, smaller cells in the heart of the country and have begun carrying out attacks nationwide, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.
The spread of fighters is an unintended consequence of a relatively successful effort by the United States and Pakistan to disrupt the insurgents’ operations, through missile strikes launched by unmanned CIA aircraft and a ground offensive carried out this fall in South Waziristan by the Pakistani army.
American and Pakistani officials say the militants’ widening reach has added to the challenge for both nations’ intelligence, which must now track an insurgent diaspora that can infiltrate Pakistan’s teeming cities and blend seamlessly with the local population.
A Pakistani intelligence official said the offensive had put militants “on the run” but added: “Now they’re all over — Afghanistan, North Waziristan and inside Pakistan.”
“They have scattered their network and structure,” said Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, a security-oriented think tank. “It’s easy for many of them to hide in Punjab or Karachi.”
Pakistani officials insist that they are doing as much as they can to counter the extremist threat and that they are paying the price. In recent months, militants have unleashed a wave of attacks in Punjab province, the military’s home base, with many of the strikes carried out by fighters who have left the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as the pressure there has mounted.
But the flow of militants out of tribal areas has frustrated U.S. intelligence, which escalated the missile strikes using drone aircraft this year but has found targets scarce in recent months. Because of the Pakistani government’s opposition, the CIA has not expanded drone warfare beyond the lawless tribal belt in the northwest.
