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India-Pakistan | |||||||
Pakistan army failures 'put the West in peril' | |||||||
2008-02-13 | |||||||
The West remains at constant risk of large-scale al-Qa'eda terrorist attacks because the Pakistani military requires years of training before it will be able to combat militancy, a Western military official has warned.
"If we [the West] have a reasonable degree of co-operation it may take two to three years for them [the Pakistan military] to be bought up to a level," he said. "But realistically the way things are going it will take five years," he added. As a result, he warned, there is a possible "worst case scenario that there will be another catastrophic event in the West and then everything else in between." He described the Pakistan military as a "dinosaur of an institution" despite the $10 billion (£5 billion) that it has received in US military aid over the past five years. "We have not being getting the bang for our buck," he said.
The official listed the Pakistani military's deficiencies ranging from the army's incapacity to launch multiple operations, poor military intelligence, hostility to Western military training and a denial among many officers that militancy poses a threat to Pakistan.
Pakistan dismissed the claim as "baseless," adding that Islamabad would take action if the US provided it with intelligence to support the statement. President Pervez Musharraf recently said that Pakistani troops were making no particular effort to hunt al-Qa'eda as they were focused on fighting Taliban militants. A suspected senior al-Qa'eda operative, Abu Laith al-Libbi, was killed in what is believed to have been a US missile strike in North Waziristan tribal area earlier this month. The Western military official said that al-Qa'eda supports local Pakistani Taliban, which have united under Baitullah Mehsud, who was blamed for the assassination of former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan has deployed about 100,000 troops to the tribal region where about 1,000 of them have been killed.
US military advisers are helping the Pakistanis double the size of their elite commando force and teaching specialised fighting techniques, such as helicopter assaults.
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Posted by:john frum |
#2 The West remains at constant risk of large-scale al-Qa'eda terrorist attacks because the Pakistani military requires years of training before it will be able to combat militancy Also putting the West at constant risk: The funding of al-Qa'eda terrorist attacks by the Pakistani military. |
Posted by: Excalibur 2008-02-13 09:21 |
#1 Instead of throwing money into Pakistan's army we should let it fall apart (accelerate it if we can) and in the meantime put money in the Afghan Army and have it invade Pakistan and conquer the tribal zone. Pakistan is a state who needs fundamentalism for its survival. Without it Pahstoons, Balochs and Sindhs would notice tehy have no business staying in Pakistan and its elites, specially their military/ISI elites would lose their lucrative positions. A strong Afghanistan could be an enemy while Pakistan is s structural one. |
Posted by: JFM 2008-02-13 05:19 |