Pakistan: Now or Never?

Give us bin Laden, Britain tells Pakistan

It’s the kind of language, or perhaps more accurately the tone, that can test the patience of any nation.

You have had eight years,  you should have been able to catch Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri,  British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is reported to have said about Pakistan in an interview with the BBC following a conversation with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari over the weekend.

“We have got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September 11, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden. Nobody has been able to get close to Zawahiri, the No 2 in al-Qaeda. And we have got to ask the Pakistan authorities and security services, army and politicians, to join us in the major effort the world is committing resources to, not only to isolate al-Qaeda, but to break them in Pakistan,” he said.

Quite apart from the fact Brown chose to go public with his frustration with Pakistan just days after a U.S. senate report said that U.S. forces had bin Laden “within their grasp” in Afghanistan back in 2001, it comes when Pakistan is in the middle of an offensive in South Waziristan which has triggered a wave of retaliatory attacks on its towns killing hundreds.

As the Times reports, Brown’s intervention upset Pakistan which shouldn’t be much of a surprise. ”We are doing what we can. We have carried two very big operations at enormous cost to the country,” the Times quotes Pakistan’s envoy Wajid Shamsul Hasan as saying.  Bin Laden, according to Pakistani intelligence was in Afghanistan, and if the West had information about him being in Pakistan, they should share it, the Pakistanis say.

Pakistan had captured or killed 700 al Qaeda members over the past eight years, a Pakistani foreign office spokesman said, adding nobody should have doubts about its resolve to fight them.

Pakistan’s South Waziristan operation: defeat or dispersal?

Pakistan’s military offensive in South Waziristan appears to be showing considerably more success than earlier attempts to take control of the tribal region on the Afghan border, at least according to army accounts which are the only real source of information. 

But will it turn the tide in Pakistan’s battle against Islamist militants? A few articles which have appeared over the last few days give pause for thought.

Dawn newspaper says in an editorial the Taliban have “been subdued, not vanquished”.

“Before operation Rah-i-Najat was launched, the army put the Taliban strength at about 10,000. Since the maximum number of Taliban fatalities has been put at about 500, those not taken prisoner may have slipped into North Waziristan or the adjoining settled districts. They must be pursued relentlessly without being given a chance to reorganise, and the nation ought to be told what strategy the authorities have up their sleeve to finish the job.”

And to achieve lasting success, the civilian administration is going to have to provide the kind of basic development – schools, roads, healthcare, electricity – that the refugees quoted in this Los Angeles Times article say they are hoping for. 

But that might prove difficult at a time when the country’s political parties – rather than focusing on development and political reforms to convince people to back the government rather than the Taliban — are once again embroiled in the kind of in-fighting that has destroyed civilian democracy in the past.

Writing in Gulf newspaper The National, historian Manan Ahmed worries about the Pakistani Taliban spilling into Baluchistan and finding fertile ground for growth among a people unhappy with the government in Islamabad.  The province is already home to a separatist Baluch insurgency. “The true crisis facing Pakistan is not the Taliban,” he writes. It is instead the state’s failure to provide political and economic rights to the many different people and ethnic groups who make up the country.

Pakistan’s slow path to salvation in Waziristan

Pakistan’s militants have unleashed a guerrilla war in cities across the country in retaliation for a military offensive against them in their South Waziristan stronghold. But while they have seized all the attention with their massive bomb and gun attacks, what about the offensive itself  in their mountain redoubt ?

Nearly two weeks into Operation Rah-e-Nijat, or Path of Salvation,  it is hard to make a firm assessment of which way the war is going, given that information is hard to come by and this may yet be still the opening stages of a long and difficult campaign.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan whose uncharacteristically low profile over the past few weeks has spawned speculation, said at the weekend that it was too early to make a call on the operation. and that he had asked his intelligence officers and they had no definitive information. Pakistan’s Dawn quotes him as telling reporters in Washington “‘it’ll take a while before we know whether the enemy they’re fighting has been dispersed or destroyed or some mixture of the two.”

Looked at in another way and judging purely by what has not happened so far, this hasn’t shaped up into the mother-of-all battles that many had predicted it to be. No major ambushes or a tribal uprising has happened as the Pakistani army inches deeper into the Taliban mini-state,  taking the village of Kotkai, the home of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud.

As the BBC and the military-focused Strategy Page blog note, the Pakistani army appears to be moving slowly and deliberately.  “This is a campaign of small battles. The soldiers are advancing from three directions, often along a single road,”  the Strategy Page  says.

“The army is advancing slowly, to insure that the troops win all these little battles. It’s important for troop morale that the tribesmen do not pull off many of their traditional ambushes and surprise attacks that have, for centuries, killed and demoralized invaders. This has largely been successful, with one soldier dying for every ten or so Islamic radical fighters killed.”

Some people think the Mehsud fighters are doing  a tactical retreat to draw the Pakistani military deeper into South Waziristan, an arid land of mountains, dried-up creeks, sparse forests and rocky plains. Local administration officials have told the BBC that the Mehsud fighters are not fighting by holding ground against the military. Instead they are ceding territory to the security forces and then counter-attacking when the military starts to secure the area.

Pakistan’s war within

A spate of gun and bomb attacks seen as a response to the Pakistan Army’s offensive in South Waziristan has sent jitters across Pakistan, including in the normally peaceful capital Islamabad. 

Conventional wisdom would have it that the attacks on both security services and civilians would eventually turn the people against Islamist militants rather as happened in Iraq at the height of the violence there. But as yet, there is no sign of a clear and coherent leadership emerging that might be able to forge a consensus against the militants.

“Where are you, our leaders?” asks Cyril Almeida in a column in Dawn newspaper. “As the country burns, parents agonise over whether to send their children to school or not, offices of businesses local and foreign ramp up their security measures, the average citizen thinks twice before venturing into crowded locales or government buildings, a simple question for our leaders: where are you? Where are you, President Zardari? Where are you, Prime Minister Gilani? Where are you, Nawaz Sharif?”

“The limitations of our political class are well known,” he writes. “Our politicians are venal, corrupt and weak. We have to muddle through with them because they are all we have. Expecting statesmanship is futile. But as the country burns and the people cower in fear, we must ask: for the love of God and all things that can be good, can they not for once, if only for a little while, stand up and be counted?”

In a country given to conspiracy theories, the attacks are feeding a rumour mill in which everyone talks about who will be targeted next, writes Fatima Bhutto, the estranged niece of the late Benazir Bhutto.

“There are stories being whispered in Pakistan these days, and their veracity is hard to gauge,” she writes. “No one knows what is real anymore in this country that seems hell-bent on self-destruction. In fact, our chief industry now seems to be the manufacture of fear, and everyone’s on the assembly line. The combination of ever-present violence and lack of reliable information has made us a country of debilitating Chinese whispers.” 

And unlike Iraq, where al Qaeda was largely seen as an outside force, those behind the spate of attacks are from within Pakistan, often from its heartland Punjab province. They spent decades being told, with official sanction, that they were fighting a noble cause, first against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during its 1979-1989 occupation and then against India in Kashmir, only to see the state turn against them.

Afghanistan, Pakistan and … all the other countries involved

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have questioned before the value of the “AfPak” label, which implies that an incredibly complicated situation involving many different countries can be reduced to a five-letter word.

Having spent the last couple of days trying to make sense of the suicide bomb attack in Iran which Tehran blamed on Jundollah, an ethnic Baluchi, Sunni insurgent group it says has bases in Pakistan,  I’m more inclined than ever to believe the “AfPak” label blinds us to the broader regional context. Analysts argue that Jundollah has been heavily influenced by hardline Sunni sectarian Islamist thinking within Pakistan which is itself the product of 30 years of proxy wars in the region dating back to the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan towards the end of the same year.

This Sunni-Shi’ite faultline is showing up in suicide bombings in Iran, while at the same time Sunni Islamist groups continue to challenge the writ of state inside Pakistan even as the Pakistan Army presses ahead with its offensive in South Waziristan, stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban.

Such is the power of the Sunni Islamist movement, that Pakistan has been forced to close schools for fear of more bombings in its heartland in response to its military offensive in South Waziristan.

So what is the response on the “Af” side of the “AfPak” strategists? After intense diplomatic efforts, President Hamid Karzai has agreed to a second-round run-off in a disputed election. Allegations of electoral fraud had undermined Washington’s strategy in Afghanistan, and delayed a decision by President Barack Obama on whether to send more troops to the region.

But how many people believe that a second-round run-off on Nov. 7 will change the dynamics of a region which is getting more, rather than less, unstable by the day? (That is not to say a run-off is a bad idea, but rather that it may be overrated in its significance).

In the meantime India is becoming increasingly worried about instability in neighbouring Pakistan. But it is in a difficult position in working out how to respond, since it wants action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for last year’s attack on Mumbai. Yet Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of the few militant groups which is not believed to have been involved in attacking targets within Pakistan, potentially pushing it down the priority list for an army already fighting in South Waziristan and facing an assault in the country’s heartland from Punjab-based groups.

Pakistan: Getting Waziristan right this time

U.S. defence officials, in a ringing vote of confidence, said over the weekend that Pakistan had the forces and equipment to launch a long-awaited ground offensive in South Waziristan. It could mount this assault without seeking more reinforcements, a U.S. official said, according to this Reuters report. Yet Pakistan had cited in recent months shortages of helicopters, armoured vehicles and precision weapons in putting off a Waziristan assault.So what has changed? Has the United States,  desperate to turn around a faltering war in Afghanistan, got ahead of itself in nudging Pakistan toward “the mother-of-all battles”? Some people are asking if the Pakistan Army is really ready to start what must be its bigest test yet since the militants turned on the Pakistani state. If the idea is to go in and linflict casualties on the Taliban in the hope of killing senior leaders, then it will be another punitive strike for which the force levels may well be adequate.But if the Pakistan Army plans to go into the Mehsud strongholds and occupy the region then the numbers are a bit worrying, says Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal.  A Pakistan Army spokesman has said that  two divisions, or up to 28,000 soldiers, are in place to take on an estimated 10,000 hard-core Taliban. But Roggio says Waliur Rehman Mehsud, who heads the Mehsud Taliban forces in Waziristan, (Hakimullah Mehsud who surfaced at the weekend is the overall head of the Pakistani Taliban) is estimated to command anything between 10,000 to 30,000 forces.  If the army were to wage a full-scale counter-insurgency they and the Frontier Corps “would need to throw multiple divisions against a Taliban force of this size,” he argues. And then there is the Haqqani network, as well as a sizeable contingent of Uzbek and other non-Pakistani fighters in the area. They may well join the fight, according to the Dawn newspaper. (more…)

Targeted killings inside Pakistan — are they working?

The death of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a U.S. Predator strike last week – now considered a certainty by U.S. and Pakistani security officials – and subsequent reports of fighting among potential successors would seem to justify the strategy of taking out top insurgent leaders

The Taliban are looking in disarray and fighting among themselves to find a successor to Mehsud, the powerful leader of the Tehrik-e- Taliban  Pakistan, the umbrella group of militant groups in the northwest, if Pakistani intelligence reports are any indication. Top Taliban commanders have since sought to deny any rift, but they certainly look more on the defensive than at any time in recent months.

So is decapitation or targeting the heads of militant groups, as a strategy to destroy these organisations, beginning to work in Pakistan ?

A considerable amount of research has gone into such a snake-head strategy, or the killing or capture of militant leaders, since Israel went down this road decades ago and the results are mixed.

Daniel Byman, Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, says that while the U.S. strategy  could tamp down the threat from al Qaeda, it can neither defeat the group nor remove it from its stronghold in Pakistan.  In a piece for Foreign Affairs, Byman who previously studied the Israeli campaign of targeting enemy leaders, lays out the gains as well as the limits to such a strategy.

- A sustained campaign of targeted killings can disrupt a militant group tremendously, as slain leaders are replaced by less experienced and less skilled colleagues. This can lead the group to make operational and strategic mistakes, and over time, pose less of a danger. Moreover, constant killings can create command rivalries and confusion. Most important, the attacks force an enemy to concentrate on defense rather than offense.

Punishing Baitullah Mehsud

Pakistan’s military campaign against Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan has been seen very much as a punitive mission - and that has just been forcefully highlighted by reports that the Pakistani Taliban leader’s wife was killed in a missile strike. A relative said that Mehsud’s second wife had been killed when a U.S. drone fired missiles into her father’s house in the village of Makeen. He said four children were among the wounded.

The Pakistan government in June ordered an offensive in South Waziristan after Mehsud was accused of masterminding a string of attacks inside Pakistan, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007. So far though, that offensive has been dominated by bombardments with air raids and medium-range artillery, while a full-blown ground offensive has yet to materialise. Attacks by U.S. drones have also increased, fuelling speculation that the CIA-operated missile strikes, though condemned by Islamabad, are being coordinated with Pakistan’s own military operations.

So what is the overall plan for South Waziristan?

The delay in launching a full-blown offensive has triggered a raft of media reports, including in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, that Pakistan had put off launching a ground assault against Mehsud due to secret talks between him and security forces.

However, Pakistani correspondent Rahumullah Yusufzai quoted a high-ranking military official as dismissing the reports, saying the time to seek a truce with Mehsud was past. He quoted the army officer as saying the reports were being spread by pro-militant sources to create confusion, and that the army would carry out a major offensive against Mehsud at the time of its choice.

Other analysts attribute the delay to a desire on the part of the Pakistan Army to lower the risk of taking heavy casualties by going in prematurely to a stronghold which is expected to be heavily defended, and to a need to complete operations following an offensive against the Taliban in Swat.

But the discussion about nature of the military offensive to some extent obscures what is perhaps a more interesting debate about its objectives. The offensive is being conducted under the Raj-era Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) 21, which provides for collective punishment of a tribe in the event of its members threatening the authorities. That notion of a punitive expedition is quite different from the military offensive in Swat which was designed not only to oust the Pakistani Taliban but to create the conditions for civil authorities to eventually step in and restore order. The objective in South Waziristan would presumably be to punish Mehsud and his tribe to such an extent that it never again threatened the Pakistani state.

Are the Taliban under pressure in Pakistan?

Are the Taliban and al Qaeda finally under serious pressure in their hideouts along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border?

Pakistani officials say U.S.-led helicopter-borne troops launched a ground assault on a Pakistani village near the Afghan border on Wednesday, killing 20 people.  The raid, in the South Waziristan tribal area, was the first known incursion into Pakistan by U.S.-led troops since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The raid has been condemned by Pakistan as a violation of its sovereignty. But the timing is puzzling.

Under intense U.S. pressure, the Pakistani army had launched major offensives against Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds in Bajaur,  another border area, and in Swat in the North-West Frontier Province, although Pakistan has since called a ceasefire for Ramadan.  Details of the offensives were sketchy, but their scale was implied by the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting.  It began to look as though Pakistan was finally taking determined action to drive out the Taliban and al Qaeda.

According to French journalist Marie-France Calle,  writing of a week spent travelling between Karachi, Peshawar and Islamabad, “everyone I have spoken to have told me that … the new people in charge have decided to go all the way in the tribal areas. They all said the only solution was to continue military operations until the Taliban and other militants were wiped out”.

So if Pakistan had begun its own campaign — as Washington has long asked it to do — why did the United States take the risk of enraging Islamabad by sending in ground troops? Did the U.S. troops believe they had a major target in their sights, a high-profile al Qaeda leader, and decide it was worth the risk? Or was the attack evidence of mounting pressure from both the United States and Pakistan on the Islamist militants  hiding out on the Pakistani-Afghan border? (The reported ground assault was followed up on Thursday by what Pakistan security officials said was a missile attack by a suspected U.S. drone in North Waziristan.)

It is too early to draw any real conclusions. However, let us just suppose the tide is turning against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan’s border areas and they are being forced out. Where will they go?