Author: Ahmed Rashid
Publication: The Tribune
Date: June 9, 2008
URL: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2008/20080609/edit.htm#6
Army poised to return to bad old ways
Relations between the US military and the
Pakistani army, critical allies in the "war on terror," are at their
worst point since Sept. 11, 2001, senior Western military officers and diplomats
here say, as Pakistani troops withdraw from several tribal areas bordering
Afghanistan that are home to Taliban and al-Qaida leaders and thousands of
their fighters.
General Ashfaq Kiyani, chief of the Pakistani
army, has told U.S. military and NATO officials that he will not retrain or
reequip troops to fight the counterinsurgency war the Americans are demanding
on Pakistan's mountainous western border.
Instead, the bulk of the army will remain
deployed on Pakistan's eastern border and prepare for possible conflicts with
traditional enemy India - wars that have always been fought on the plains
of Punjab. More than 80 percent of the $10 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan
since the Sept. 11 attacks has gone to the military; much of it has been used
to buy expensive weapons systems for the Indian front rather than the smaller
items needed for counterinsurgency.
There are also signs that Washington is delaying
delivery of US arms meant for the eastern front and is asking Western allies
to do the same.
In recent weeks, Islamic militants in Indian
Kashmir, restrained by Islamabad since Pakistan and India conducted peace
talks in 2004, have revived their attacks against Indian forces. Extremist
bombings in Jaipur, India, on May 14 killed more than 80 people. Relations
between India and Pakistan have improved dramatically in recent years, but
tensions could again escalate.
Pakistani army officials have told Washington
that they will continue to deploy the Frontier Corps and other paramilitary
units along the long, porous border with Afghanistan, but they are poorly
equipped, badly trained and have lost every major engagement with militants
so far. The US military is training and equipping these nearly 100,000 troops
but has rejected Pakistani requests to equip four to five new units.
The Taliban virtually rules the seven tribal
agencies that make up the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Growing
frustration among U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has led to a crescendo
of calls by U.S. and Afghan officials, NATO officers, European leaders and
the United Nations urging Pakistan to continue supporting the fight against
extremism.
But the Pakistani army is shaken. It has lost
more than 1,000 paramilitary and other soldiers since its first offensive
against the Taliban in 2004. Recently, it has reached unofficial peace deals
with Pakistani and Afghan Taliban leaders in the tribal areas in which they
have promised not to attack Pakistani forces.
These deals do not stop the Taliban from attacking
NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. Taliban attacks from Pakistan into
Afghanistan have risen dramatically this spring; in April, incidents spiked
to more than 100 a week, up from about 60 a week in March.
Attacks probably rose in May, according to
NATO officials, who report a sharp increase in the number of Pakistanis, Arabs
and those of other nationalities fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.
One effect of the peace deals became clear
last month, when 30 journalists were invited to an unprecedented news conference
in South Waziristan with Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban
and the main host for Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida leaders in the tribal areas.
Journalists saw few signs of the military, with the Taliban occupying army
posts that had been abandoned.
Mehsud vowed that "jihad in Afghanistan
will continue" and declared that "Islam does not recognize any man-made
barriers or boundaries." Last month, a Taliban Web site called for a
general uprising in Afghanistan "till the withdrawal of the last crusading
invader."
Early victims of the Pakistani army's strategic
shift are the civilian governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghan President
Hamid Karzai, who is under severe international pressure to improve governance
and fight corruption, told me during a long conversation that he was deeply
frustrated by Pakistan's attitude. "We have to succeed in convincing
the world to end the sanctuaries for terrorism," Karzai said.
The stepped-up Taliban insurgency in southern
and eastern Afghanistan, he said, makes it difficult to provide the security
needed for improved governance and faster reconstruction.
In Peshawar, the largest city in northwest
Pakistan, senior government officials said that the army has not shared details
of the peace deals or intelligence information but that they were not in a
position to contradict the army or the deals. Peshawar is virtually besieged
by Taliban-style militias to its north, south and west, which carry out bombings
and kidnappings, despite the agreements.
It was hoped that after elections in February
ended nine years of military rule, Pakistan's civilian government would take
charge of foreign policy and persuade the army to share national security
policy toward India and Afghanistan.
But the government has been plagued by problems
and is paralyzed on several fronts. Getting the army back on track to fight
extremism is vital if Pakistan is not to be swamped by Taliban-style rule
and become a haven for al-Qaida.
Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, is the
author most recently of "Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the
Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia."
By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post