Pakistan: Now or Never?

India: should it take a gamble on Pakistan?

Some people in India are calling upon the new coalition government to make a series of bold moves towards Pakistan that will compel the neighbour to put its money where  the mouth is.

If Pakistan keeps saying that it cannot fully and single-mindedly go after militants on its northwest frontier and indeed increasingly within the heartland because of the threat it faces from India, then New Delhi must call its bluff, argued authors Nitin Pai and Sushant K. Singh in a recent piece for India’s Mint newspaper.

How about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, back for a second term, giving a categorical public declaration that Pakistan need not fear an Indian military attack so long as the Pakistan army is engaged in fighting with Taliban militants?  While a verbal commitment may not convince the military brass in Rawalpindi, it will likely play well in Washington as it rathchets up pressure on the Pakistan army to take the battle to the militants.

Second and to back up its assurance, India could move some of the army strike formations from the international border with Pakistan in Punjab and Rajasthan. “Such a bold, strategic move will not only make India’s verbal assurances credible, but it will also immediately result in irresistible pressure on the Pakistani army to commit more of its troops to the western border,” the authors wrote in the Mint piece.

Clearly, the aim of such a peace gamble is to expose the contradiction within the Pakistani position, force them to either go full throttle after militant groups, some of whom are suspected to be tied to its intelligence agencies, or  face America’s wrath.

Moving Indian troops back will compel the Pakistan army to act against the Taliban, and because it is incapable of doing so, will cause the United States to realise that there is no alternative to dismantling the military-jihadi complex, Pai and Singh argue.

from Photographers Blog:

The most difficult thing to shoot in Kashmir…

During nearly two decades of violent Kashmir conflict, I have covered fierce gun battles, between Indian soldiers and Muslim militants, suicide bombings, rebel attacks, massacres, protests, mayhem, violent elections and disasters.

But the question that always comes to mind is "what is the hardest to shoot?'

I always remember protests or riots, clashes between stone throwing protesters and gun-toting Indian troops. Stress levels quickly rise as me and my text colleague, Sheikh Mushtaq, realize that our assignment will not be easy whenever we go out, mostly on Fridays, the day when Muslims offer congregational weekly prayers, which turn into weekly protests against Indian rule in Kashmir.

There is literally no place to hide and shooting is nearly impossible when angry protesters take to the streets and rocks rain down; Indian troops retaliate with tear gas shells, rubber bullets and many times with live ammunition. Most of the time we, with protective gear and camera equipment strapped to our shoulders in backpacks, are stuck in the narrow streets of downtown Srinagar as impatient crowds and ruthless troops battle for hours.

India, Pakistan and the rise of China

India has been fretting for months that it could be pushed into the background by the United States’ economic dependence on China and by the renewed focus on Pakistan by President Barack Obama’s administration.  That anxiety appears to have increased lately – perhaps because the end of the country’s lengthy election campaign has opened up space to think more about the external environment — and is focusing on China.

In an interview with the Hindustan Times, Indian Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major said China posed a greater threat than Pakistan.  “China is a totally different ballgame compared to Pakistan,” he was quoted as saying. “We know very little about the actual capabilities of China, their combat edge or how professional their military is … they are certainly a greater threat.”

The Mint newspaper followed up with a editorial calling China “perhaps the gravest external threat” to India’s security. “That India is in an unstable neighbourhood is clearer than ever this summer,” it said. “But troubles from Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Nepal pale when compared with China.”

The increased anxiety has been driven by the end of the war in Sri Lanka, where the government’s victory was attributed partly to a supply of Chinese weapons, and where China has been building a new port on the island’s southern coast.

“This is part of a broad move by China into the Indian Ocean, which India has traditionally considered its sphere of influence,” said British newspaper The Times. Chinese engineers are building another port at Gwadar in Pakistan; roads are being cut or improved through Burma to help trade routes between Yunnan province in China and the Indian Ocean; ties are being improved with island nations such as the Seychelles; surveillance stations are being sited or upgraded on Burmese islands.”

But even without the Sri Lankan trigger, Indian analysts have suggested that India may no longer enjoy the favoured position that developed under former president George W. Bush, when Washington forged close ties with Delhi, in part as a counterweight to China.  Facing the twin challenges of financial crisis and a military stalemate in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is dependent on India’s two main rivals — China to pay for American debt and Pakistan to help it defeat the Taliban.

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Pakistan, from Swat to Baluchistan via Waziristan

The Pakistan Army is engaged in what appears to be a very nasty little war in the Swat valley against heavily armed Taliban militants.  With journalists having left Swat, there have been no independent reports of what is going on there, though the scale of the operation can be partly measured by the huge numbers of refugees – nearly 1.7 million – who fled to escape the military offensive.

Dawn newspaper carried an interview with a wounded soldier saying the Taliban had buried mines and planted IEDs every 50 metres.  ‘They positioned snipers in holes made out of the walls of houses. They used civilians as human shields. They used to attack from houses and roofs,” it quoted him as saying. ‘They are well equipped, they have mortars. They have rockets, sniper rifles and every type of sophisticated weapons.”

Al Jazeera’s correspondent said that the battle was about to get worse as the army prepared to enter Mingora, the main town in the Swat valley. The BBC’s Urdu service managed to talk to a couple of people trapped inside Mingora, one of whom mentioned coming across an Arab among a group of militants.

President Asif Ali Zardari has talked of extending the battle into Waziristan, believed to be the hideout of al Qaeda, and now Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said a U.S. military offensive in southern Afghanistan could push Taliban fighters from there into Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. (To get a sense of the geographical scale of this, scroll down to the map at the bottom of this page to see how far Quetta, the main city in Baluchistan, is from the Swat valley.) Mullen said both U.S. and Pakistani forces were aware of the risk of a spillover from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and were planning measures to prevent it.

He did not say how they would do this, although the Wall Street Journal said earlier this week that the United States was sending 25 to 50 Special Forces personnel into Baluchistan to train Pakistanis, bringing U.S. troops deeper into Pakistan. The Special Forces would focus on training Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, but were not meant to fight alongside them, it said. But it added, “A senior American military officer said he hoped Islamabad would gradually allow the U.S. to expand its training footprint inside Pakistan’s borders. A former U.S. official familiar with the plans said the deployments would ‘get more American eyes and ears’ into the strategically important region.”

U.S. officials say Quetta is the base for the Afghan Taliban and its leader Mullah Omar, who are able to hide in the Afghan refugee camps that sprang up after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (Mukhtar Khan at CTC Sentinel has a detailed report on the Afghan Taliban in Quetta which you can find by scrolling down on this pdf document.)

But taking on the Afghan Taliban in Baluchistan, while also chasing the Pakistan Taliban out of Swat, and pursuing al Qaeda in Waziristan would be a massive operation. It’s not clear whether there is some kind of masterplan and timeline for all this that we have yet to be told about, or if as Cyril Almeida worries in a column in Dawn, the Pakistan government is simply “steering blindfolded” with “a mix of lucky breaks and nonsense planning.”

How much time does Pakistan have?

Ahmed Rashid’s article on Pakistan in the New York Review of Books makes for an alarming read.  Excerpts do not do justice to it,  as you have to read the whole thing to understand why he thinks Pakistan really is on the brink, but here are a few:

“American officials are in a concealed state of panic, as I observed during a recent visit to Washington at the time when 17,000 additional troops were being dispatched to Afghanistan. The Obama administration unveiled its new Afghan strategy on March 27, only to discover that Pakistan is the much larger security challenge, while US options there are far more limited.”

“The last two years have bought some hope in the growth of the middle class, an articulate and increasingly influential civil society made up partly of urban professionals and publicly involved women. Most Pakistanis are not Islamic extremists and believe in moderate and spiritual forms of Islam, including Sufism. However, Pakistan is now reaching a tipping point. There is a chronic failure of leadership, whether by civilian politicians or the army. President Zardari’s decision to invade Swat in early May came only after pressure was applied by the Obama administration and the army and the government had been left with no other palatable options. But with the Taliban opening new fronts, it will soon become impossible for the army to respond to the multiple threats it faces on so many geographically distant battlefields. The Taliban’s campaigns to assassinate politicians and administrators have demoralized the government.”

“The Obama administration can provide money and weapons but it cannot recreate the state’s will to resist the Taliban and pursue more effective policies. Pakistan desperately needs international aid, but its leaders must first define a strategy that demonstrates to its own people and other nations that it is willing to stand up to the Taliban and show the country a way forward.”

There has been much alarmist talk this year about Pakistan, notably with U.S. adviser David Kilcullen saying in March that the Pakistani state could collapse within six months, followed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying in April that Pakistan posed a “mortal threat” to the world. Most of that talk has been dismissed as exaggerated, including by Juan Cole in his blog Informed Comment and other analysts. The country has a strong civil society, which only in March took to the streets to demand an independent judiciary and the reinstatement of the Chief Justice. It has a powerful military, and whatever its critics say about its policies, the Pakistan Army is intensely patriotic and is hardly likely to hand over control of the country to Islamist militants who do not even believe in the existence of the nation state. 

Yet looking at the flood of refugees in Pakistan — above one million and still rising, according to the UNHCR — you do have to wonder how much time Pakistan has to right itself.  President Asif Ali Zardari says the current offensive in the Swat valley is just the start of an operation that will take the army  deep into the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.  How many more internal refugees can the country cope with, especially given that it traces its current instability to the three million refugees who flooded in from Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979?

Part of the problem is that some of the solutions for Pakistan lie in the long term.  To the west, an end to the fighting in Afghanistan would stop instability washing over into Pakistan. But no one expects a political settlement in Afghanistan any time soon. To the east, peace with India would boost the economy by encouraging trade and give the Pakistan Army an opportunity to readjust its mindset away from seeing India as an existential threat. But India remains wary of Pakistan after last November’s attack on Mumbai and any moves made by the newly re-elected government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reduce tension are likely to be slow and tentative.

After Indian election, relationship with Pakistan back in focus

After a diplomatic pause enforced by India’s lengthy election campaign, the country will soon have a new government after the ruling Congress party won an unexpectedly decisive victory.  But analysts doubt the change of government will bring a significant change of heart in India towards Pakistan.

Despite Pakistan’s offensive against the Taliban in the Swat valley, they say India has yet to be convinced the Pakistan Army is ready to crack down more widely on Islamist militants, fearing instead that it will selectively go after some groups, while leaving others like the Afghan Taliban and Kashmir-oriented groups alone.  While Pakistan wants to resume talks broken off by New Delhi after last November’s attack on Mumbai, India has said it wants Islamabad to take more action first against those behind the assault, which it blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is expected to remain in office after the Congress election victory, is now likely to come under pressure from the United States to soften India’s stance towards Pakistan.  The current stand-off leaves both countries vulnerable to a fresh flare-up of tensions which could torpedo Washington’s plans for Pakistan and Afghanistan. It also complicates U.S. efforts to persuade the Pakistan Army to move troops from the Indian border to fight Taliban militants on its western border with Afghanistan.

So how will Singh respond?

Indian analysts are already arguing India must stand up to U.S. pressure to ensure its own interests are not sacrificed to those of the United States. In an editorial in the Times of India, Brahma Chellaney writes that U.S. policy — very much focused on Afghanistan — now runs counter to Indian interests. He argues that Kashmir-oriented groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba are of little interest to the United States. “Instead, Washington intends to goad New Delhi post-election to reduce border troop deployments, a step that would help Pakistan to infiltrate more armed terrorists into India.”

It may not be entirely correct to say that Washington is not interested in the Lashkar-e-Taiba.  The group was cited in media reports as a suspect in the London underground bombings in 2005, potentially making it as much of a global threat as al Qaeda. But Chellaney’s comments do underline a traditional suspicion in the region – both in India and Pakistan — about what is seen as a ruthless U.S. focus on its own interests.

In an editorial in The Hindu former diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar says India must galvanise its regional diplomacy, rebuilding its once close relationship with Russia and Iran, to strengthen its hand. But he also writes that, “certainly, resumption of the composite dialogue with Pakistan ought to be a priority.”

from Global News Journal:

When is a coalition not a coalition?

How can you tell when U.S. forces in Afghanistan are operating alone?

When they call it "the coalition".

That’s not a joke. It's just how things work in Afghanistan, where two separate forces with two separate command structures -- one completely American, the other about half American -- operate side by side under the command of the same U.S. general.

 "When we say 'coalition', basically that means it's just us," a helpful U.S. military spokeswoman explained last month to a reporter who had just arrived in country after being away for a couple of  years. "Otherwise, it's the 'alliance'."

And it's not just words.

"The alliance" and "the coalition" maintain completely separate press offices, each of which is often allowed to give only bits and pieces of detail about the same incident. The result can be a bit confusing.

First, some history.

Making decisions in Pakistan

With Pakistan facing a refugee crisis, and its army engaged in intense fighting in the Swat valley, the question of who makes decisions in the country and how these are taken may not seem like the top priority.

But Shuja Nawaz at the Atlantic Council makes a strong argument in favour of deepening institutional mechanisms for decision-making. While President Asif Ali Zardari, who has retained the sweeping presidential powers of his predecessor Pervez Musharraf, made many decisions himself and also personally represented Pakistan diplomatically on trips overseas, the institutional process of decision-making that would allow coordination between the different branches of the country’s government is lacking, he writes. As a result the government seemed unprepared to deal with the million refugees created by Pakistan’s military offensive against the Taliban. 

“If there had been an institutional mechanism for national security analysis and decision-making with a clear central command authority … the exodus would have been anticipated and arrangements put in place to look after the displaced people,” he writes. ”The National Security Council has been abolished. The Defence Committee of the cabinet does not appear to have met to discuss the crisis. And in the absence of a National Security Adviser, sacked by the prime minister in a moment of pique following the Mumbai attack, there is no formal mechanism for studying such issues nor a central point in government to ensure that all parts of the administration work together to anticipate problems and resolve issues.”

“A highly personalized decision-making process remains in place, informed in some cases more by anecdote than by analysis. Most exchanges on military issues take place directly between the President and the Army Chief. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is often by-passed. Coordination of the fight against the militants between Interior Ministry and the military is desultory at best,” he says.

“The army, still unequipped and untrained for counterinsurgency, may yet be able to clear the Swat valley of the militants. But, as a senior military officer confided to me, the army will be unable to hold the territory indefinitely. Providing governance and justice is the civilians’ job. And there is no evidence of civilian institutions or a police force to do the needful. So the Taliban may return to fill the vacuum, as they did before.”

By most accounts, Pakistan faces a long war if it is to take on the Taliban while also rebuilding shattered communities and bringing much-needed economic development to its north-west.  But success in long wars tends to depend more on logistics than on leadership. It will be interesting to see how well Pakistan develops the institutional mechanisms needed to provide those logistics.

Too much fighting, not enough talking?

David Kilcullen knows a thing or two about counter-insurgency.

A former lieutenant-colonel in the Australian army and a senior adviser to U.S. General David Petraeus, he helped shape the “surge” policy that is widely credited with pulling Iraq back from the brink of chaos. He has just written a book entitled “The Accidental Guerrilla: fighting small wars in the midst of a big one” which closely examines insurgencies from Thailand and Indonesia to Afghanistan and Iraq, including what it takes to contain and quell them.

Far from being gung-ho or militaristic, Kilcullen takes an analytical approach, putting a heavy emphasis on the need for cultural and linguistic understanding. Without a deep appreciation of history, politics and anthropology, defeat is all but guaranteed  in complex foreign lands even for the world’s mightiest of armies, he argues.

 Which is why it was particularly notable what he said at a book launch in London this week.

The U.S. military has about 1.6 million personnel all told, from frontline troops to cooks and drivers. But there are just 6,000 foreign service officers in the U.S. State Department, he said. That’s about 260 soldiers to each diplomat, a far higher ratio than in any other major military in the world, according to Kilcullen.

“There are more members of U.S. military marching bands then there are foreign service officers,” he said. “In fact, there are about ten times as many accountants in the U.S. military as there are foreign service officers in the U.S. State Department.”

His point hardly needed reinforcing. The U.S. military spends vast amounts — forecast to be $650 billion in 2009 — on ensuring its armed forces are able to fight whatever threat may emerge anywhere in the world at any given time, but a tiny fraction of that amount on diplomatic and cultural liaison work that might help understand a conflict better or even prevent it.

Guest contribution: War on the Taliban

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The writer is the High Commissioner of Pakistan to Britain.

By Wajid Shamsul Hasan 

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had a vision of a modern, progressive and secular Pakistan. Yet some are trying to replace it with a Talibanised state in which schools are closed, heads chopped off, women flogged in public and a pagan religion takes over in the name of Islam that Allah the Most Merciful bequeathed to humankind through the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) to enlighten the darkened world.

Ever since its advent, Islam has been a religion of peace and compassion with no room for animosity for any other religion. Its fundamental tenet is Huququl Ibad – that is, you would not do unto others what you would not want to be done to you.   Not withstanding the ugly facts as to how we have come to the present tragic pass we must remember that the world is a stage where players play their part and fade away. However, when it comes to a leadership role, some leave indelible footprints on the sands of time. Others who play foul with the destiny of a nation are consigned to the dustbin of history or are acknowledged as unavoidable footnotes mentioned for their misdeeds.

While not condoning the questionable role of some of the civilian leaders of the past, members of the superior judiciary, civil bureaucracy and selective elite, the most devastating impact on Pakistan’s growth on sound democratic lines, in keeping with Mr Jinnah’s unequivocal emphasis that religion shall have nothing to do with the business of the state, was dealt by the constant direct extra-constitutional interventions by military dictators for over 31 years.

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