 No matter what government is in office, the Pakistan army is “ill-suited and perhaps incapable” of accomplishing the necessary in the Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan, according to a report appearing here.
| Though they're perfectly suited to palace politics, intrigue and nepotism ... |
The analysis by Mark Sappenfield in the Christian Science Monitor quotes Moeed Yusuf of Strategic and Economic Policy Research, Islamabad, as saying, “If this continues, the army will tone it down because there will be too many losses.” The US must temper its expectations of what Pakistan can do militarily in the war on terror or risk inflaming the situation further, through increased anti-American attitudes or even possible defections from the army.
| I rather suspect the White House understands exactly what the Pak army can't do ... |
The US correspondent writes that the offensive is almost universally perceived to be an American war contracted out to its Pakistani ally. The army built to counter the massive threat of the Indian military is being asked to fight its own citizens in an unpopular counterinsurgency campaign that it has neither the will nor the skill-set to fight. “The Army officers have started realising that this battle is not worth the cost,” according to Hassan Abbas of Harvard University. “It has had a huge impact on the psychology of the Army.”
Yusuf told the Monitor that despite misgivings about the current offensive in the Tribal Areas, the army brass does not dismiss the need for action there. “The military is thinking about it very seriously. The threat is an internal one for years to come.” Some in the army still believe the militants are a useful and manageable tool.
| That's the ISI wing talking. |
If the West leaves Afghanistan – as many here believe it will – they will give Pakistan a means to influence events there. Moreover, the army is hardly designed to take them on in their own territory. Since its inception, the Pakistani army has looked eastward to India, focusing on the plains of Punjab and sands of Sindh, from where any invasion might come. It is not trained to fight the kind of insurgency it is now engaged in.
| Nor does it particularly want to. It's amazing how experts and journalists keep glossing over the fact that the ISI created the Taliban. |
The article quotes Pakistani diplomat Zamir Akram as telling a recent meeting in Washington, “When we hear people in Washington or London say that Pakistan needs to do more, the question is: Do you understand what you’re asking us to do? Would you go into Texas or wherever on the border areas and actually kill Americans?” For this reason, many experts do not expect the current offensive to continue. If it does, the army “will get divided vertically,” with officers remaining loyal to headquarters and the rank and file becoming increasingly alienated, according to Ayesha Siddiqa. “Cracks are appearing,” she adds. She agrees that the way forward is not militarily – it is by developing the region economically over the next 15 to 20 years, undercutting the poverty and lack of education that feeds extremism.
| Closing the madrassas and shooting the trouble-makers would help. |
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