National insecurity
The Pakistani army must change its tactics against the militants if it is to
halt a descent into chaos
* * Martin Woollacott
* The Guardian,
* Wednesday July 30 2008
>From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, the armed forces of the states
>located in the world's most intense conflict zone are stacked together like a
>dangerous house of cards. They plan, plot and puzzle, as embattled military
>establishments always do. Yet the most important decisions are arguably those
>that face the army least often mentioned in discussion - that of Pakistan.
For the Pakistani army has to decide how to save itself and the country it has
dominated for so long. In the struggle across the region, it could even be said
that decisions made in Rawalpindi, the army's headquarters, may turn out to be
more important than those made in Washington, Baghdad, Tehran or Tel Aviv. And
this army is highly autonomous. It has frequently been the government, and
remains by far the most powerful institution in the country.
The regional war on whose name nobody can agree - terror, occupation, invasion
- has shifted its shape in recent years. In western eyes, anyway, it was in the
beginning about Afghanistan, then Iraq was its epicentre, until the focus
shifted to Iran and its nuclear ambitions, and then back to Afghanistan.
Pakistan always figured when Afghanistan was in the spotlight because failure
to deal effectively with the Taliban and al-Qaida in the border areas puts Nato
forces at a disadvantage. Pakistan was seen as a dimension of the Afghan
problem, and was again presented in those terms yesterday when the prime
minister, Yousaf Raza Galani, assured George Bush in Washington that Pakistan
would strive to secure the Afghan border.
Now you could put it the other way round. As insurgents have moved from the
border strip to some settled areas of Pakistan in recent months, it is at least
an open question as to which country is the sideshow and which the main event.
Without demonising these movements - which mix tribalism, jihadism, Pashtun
national feeling and criminality, and are also the product of social breakdown
resulting from decades of war - it cannot be right that parts of Pakistan are
ruled by parallel governments, judged by parallel courts, and make war on their
own terms whenever they wish. Militants are even now encroaching on the
environs of Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province. In
Mohmand, the Taliban controls economic enterprises. The number of foreign
fighters entering Pakistan is said to be now much higher than those entering
Iraq. And they are coming to Pakistan not only to fight in Afghanistan, but in
Pakistan itself.
The Pakistani army, however, is still following a strategy of negotiations and
ceasefires, punctuated by well-signalled and often bloodless sweeps by the
local Frontier Corps. True, this is also the policy of the new national
government and of the Peshawar provincial government. It is also true that
heavy-handed military operations are not the best counter to insurgency. But in
the army's case, the softly, softly approach has been shaped by the defeats and
setbacks it suffered in earlier efforts to deal with insurgents and by its own
involvement in backing extremist movements. Such movements were useful tools in
the confrontation with India in Kashmir, and in influencing events in
Afghanistan.
It is less a question of the army's tactical choices than of whether it still
cannot give up the idea of "keeping" the militant movements as a card in future
conflicts. But the militants are out of control. They tried to kill Parvez
Musharraf, they probably killed Benazir Bhutto, they have bombed army offices
and even the headquarters of Inter-Services Intelligence. The attempt to outwit
India, the rationale of the Pakistani armed forces since independence, is
outdated. As Ahmed Rashid says in his book on the regional crisis, Descent into
Chaos: "The army's insecurity .... has now come full circle, for Pakistan's
very future is at stake as extremists threaten to undermine Pakistan itself."
That threat comes at a time when Pakistan is otherwise in a process of renewal,
as evidenced by the success of liberal and secular candidates in recent
elections. An expanding urban middle class wants a new kind of country, and
feudal and tribal dominance in rural areas is fading. Overprivileged and
muddle-headed, the army needs to follow suit. If it does so, the moment of
opportunity for extremism in Pakistan will be brief - and that could have a
transforming effect on the rest of the region.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/30/pakistan
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