These questions - critical of an army that is already stretched out, particularly on the western border, spread out in parts of embattled Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
and Tribal Areas, and dealing with an insurgency in Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
- are being asked inside and outside Pakistain. The international community is closely watching the role of Pakistain Army.
Financially, for the military itself, engagement in Balochistan as well as in FATA has turned out to be an extremely expensive affair. The roughly four billion dollars the US now owes Pakistain for the 140,000 plus deployment in FATA is a case in point. It has spent this money on the US request but is still waiting for reimbursement.
A series of discussions with senior military officials clearly suggests that the past romance with the idea of "strategic depth" has made way to greater realism. Most of officials, also in the ministry of foreign affairs, are reconciled with the fact that Afghanistan will remain under the gaze of the US-led NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
and virtually in the control of the non-Pashtun dominated security establishment for a long time to come. This "nightmarish" prospect simply works against the obsolete idea of placing or desiring a "friendly" government in Kabul. And the increasing collaborative framework among New Delhi, Kabul and the USA serves as another almost immovable stumbling block against any plans Pakistain Army may have for Afghanistan.
| It is neither a revelation nor a coincidence that the US, India and Afghanistan share concerns against the Pak security establishment for having been either in cahoots or in working relations with several non-state actors |
...the
Army of the Pure,an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is
banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
alias Jamaat-ud-Dawa
...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba...
and Jaish-e-Mohammad
...literally
Army of Mohammad, a Pak-based Deobandi terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in 2000, after he split with the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. In 2002 the government of Pervez Musharraf
bannedthe group, which changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam and continued doing what it had been doing before without missing a beat...
are the Pak military's first line of defence. For Kabul and Washington, the so-called Quetta shura and the Haqqani Network , which are striving to end the "foreign occupation" of Afghanistan, are the "veritable arms" of Pak security establishment.
India, Kabul and the USA are convinced that such groups constitute an essential part of the instruments that Pakistain Army has deployed to pursue its foreign policy objectives. As a consequence, there is ever greater unity among the three countries on the issue of countering Pakistain for its "abetment of terrorist forces operating on the western and eastern borders."
Pak Army as well as elements within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs still appear to be in a reactionary mode. Without charting a clearly defined way for Pakistain, they all say in unison that "without knowing what the Americans want in Afghanistan and in the region, we cannot devise and spell out our policy." They still maintain, and in this case legitimately, that for Pakistain, Afghanistan is a long-term reality and it cannot frame its policy in the "endgame context."
This appears to be a faulty approach as predicating our own policy on external factors thus far has taken us nowhere. It cannot be helpful in future either. Unless the Pak security establishment is clear itself and abandons foreign policy instruments that serve as the basic ingredient of discord in its relations with India, Afghanistan, and the United States, it will not be able to pursue even well-intended objectives in Afghanistan.
Pakistain's Afghanistan policy, or the military's strategy for that country to be precise, still seems to be pegged to the American endgame in Afghanistan as well as to future political set up in Kabul.
| Given the broader US policy matrix on the region, one can safely assume that even the United States will not think of a conclusive "endgame" in Afghanistan. Nor can it afford to think of exiting from that country lock stock and barrel. |
American and Indian presence in Afghanistan is now almost a constant. So is Pakistain's interest in Afghanistan because of the geographical proximity. Pakistain's security establishment shall have to factor that in when thinking of its engagement with Kabul. Washington and Kabul shall also have to accord recognition to this Pak interest. This might create a middle ground for all the four countries to hammer out a mutually acceptable collaborative framework, which could also help remove mutual mistrust.
But, in the words of Carolyn Brooks, a political analyst and a former insider, "If the US et al would stop badgering Pakistain about the Haqqani Network, I am sure that Pakistain would gladly give him up. But unfortunately the US knows nothing of face saving. Pakistain is still upset about the NATO incident last November and the unfortunate deaths of the Pak troops."
Brooks, in a reference to the Pak security establishment's reactive bent of mind, also says that "Pakistain needs to find a way to come into more of a Western way of thinking if it wants to continue to receive money from the west."
The Pak economy is in doldrums. The impact will be visible in a few years as the population increases and unemployment rises. Pakistain cannot afford a perennial state of conflict with the US or even India. If it does, that means economic disaster. And the disaster will be even more pressing for the military establishment itself. Unless it wants to turn the country into another Afghanistan, Sudan or Somalia, the army and its supporters in the civilian government will have to get into a proactive, economy-oriented policy framework.