By Javed Hussain
DEMOCRATIC governments serve the people. They enhance their quality of life. They protect, not kill, them.
| That shows a basic misunderstanding of the concept. A democratic government reflects the will of the people. There are times - periods of riot and/or insurrection spring to mind - in a nation's life, however, when killing a certain fraction of the demos becomes necessary for the survival of the rest of them. |
But the Musharraf government that claims to be democratic has not only failed to redress the grievances of the people of Balochistan and the tribal areas of the NWFP. It has also chosen to kill its own people while addressing the concerns of its masters in the West.
| Pakistan is, with the exception of the Democratic Republic of Congo, about the most prone to riot and insurrection of any country I can think of. Paleostine doesn't count because it's not an official country. |
It sent in the army into these regions to crush the people whom it has dubbed as terrorists.
| There was a certain fairness to dubbing them terrorists, since they were killing their fellow citizens, terrorizing the ones they didn't kill, and they were in open rebellion against the gummint. |
In the process, it has ignited the flames of insurgency which could have far-reaching consequences for the future of the country. The flames are rising by the day. AfghanistanÂ’s ruling Northern Alliance and IndiaÂ’s RAW must be rejoicing. They have been given an opportunity to exploit the insurgency to settle old scores with Pakistan. Given their animosity towards this country, they would make every effort to keep the flames burning.
| From where I sit, it looks like the flames are being fanned from someplace in Chitral. Baitullah Mehsud as a Norther Alliance catspaw? TNSM as an instrument of RAW? The square pieces don't seem to fit into the round holes, do they? |
The Pakistan Army is trained to fight a conventional, not a guerilla, war. The strategy of one is the antithesis of the other. Year after year, the army units practise the conduct of operations in a conventional setting, where the battlefield has well-defined fronts, flanks and rear areas and where the dispositions of the enemy are known.
| In other words, their training, planning, and operations are hidebound and conventional. There is no original thinking, nor is there much thinking directed at the actual situation on the ground. That's probably why they've never won a war. |
They are trained to fight as part of a brigade, which is a part of a division, a number of which constitute a corps. The armyÂ’s strategic plan is required to be unified in conception. Centralisation is, therefore, inherent in the armyÂ’s structure. Consequently, at the higher level, the planners are trained in the application of operational strategy to the planning and conduct of war against an adversary who enjoys numerical and material superiority. Against this backdrop, they seek to create a favourable relative situation at the right place and time for the decisive battle.
| Another idea whose time has gone. Been gone for 50 years, in fact... |
Thus, the armyÂ’s strategy is characterised by concentration in time and space. Guerilla warfare has a totally different character. In it, there is no battlefield in the proper sense of the word, no fronts, no flanks and no rear areas. Instead of one large blow, the guerillas strike a number of small blows in different directions, without giving the adversary any respite. They avoid holding ground as much as they avoid pitched battles. In this way, they deny opportunities to the army to assert its superiority in combat power.
| That's why good intelligence becomes paramount in counterguerrilla operations. You've got a real problem when your intel agency is actually on the side of the bad guyz, don't you? |
Decentralisation is, therefore, inherent in the guerilla structure. Thus, their strategy is characterised by dispersion in time and space. In this antithesis lies the essential difference between the strategies of conventional warfare and guerilla warfare — concentration on one side, dispersion on the other.
| And yet, guerrilla wars have been won in the past... |
When the insurgents come under pressure, they reach out and strike targets outside their zone of operations, as they did in Mardan, Hangu, Kohat, Mardan, D.I. Khan, Kharian, Quetta, Swat, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Tarbela. In the process, they have also conveyed a message to the government that they can strike anywhere at any time.
| The gummint, rather than responding by attacking those controlling the insurgents, has instead given into their demands, released prisoners, withdrawn the military from their territory, and in general displayed a spectacular incompetence. |
After the SSG operation against Lal Masjid, they had warned of dire revenge™; by striking at Tarbela they have taken their revenge. As a result, military installations across the country have become more vulnerable, and the sense of fear and uncertainty in the minds of their commanders, more intense.
| Yet still they refuse to purge their ranks of Islamists and those allied with them. Where do they get these geniuses? |
The insurgents fighting the army have close affinity with the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan.
| Ohfergawdsake. They are the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan. And both branches are operating in coordination with the al-Qaeda central command in Chitral. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have designated Qaeda qommanders. |
They not only enjoy the support of the local population, but also have the sympathy of the people outside their area. As a result, they have developed an effective intelligence network that enables them to stay a few steps ahead of the army.
| Especially when aided by their ISI controllers... |
They are battle-hardened and skilled in guerilla tactics and techniques, they know the local terrain well, and above all, are so highly motivated that they are willing to die even from suicide detonations.
| They use the same tactics they use in Afghanistan, to somewhat less effect. The Afghans and ISAF regularly send 40, 50, 100 Taliban to hell in the course of a day's operations. The Paks lose 250 troops at a pop, just marching off under the guns of their fellow Moose limbs. |
The soldiers on the other hand, do not know the terrain well and lack the support of the local people — which also makes it difficult for the military intelligence to operate freely in the area. It was lack of correct intelligence that led to the capture and killing of 18 SSG commandos when they landed by helicopter on a hilltop in Waziristan for an operation.
| And not apalling incompetence on the part of their officers. Certainly not. |
Above all, the level of motivation of the soldiers when fighting their own people is as low as it is high when fighting an external enemy.
| When your ranks have been infiltrated by the enemy that's often the case. |
It was this factor, more than any other, which led the 300 armed soldiers to give themselves up to a small band of insurgents — and it continues to manifest itself in the abduction of armed personnel of the security forces almost on a daily basis.
| ... making them look like a bunch of guys wearing similar suits, rather than an organized military force... |
Given their traditional organisation and training, the soldiers find it difficult to adapt to the clandestine nature of guerilla warfare where the “enemy”, their own people, is invisible — being everywhere, yet being nowhere. When they are moved from one point to the other, they are ambushed, and when they set up check posts, they are attacked.
| ... and there's not enough initiative to be found anywhere around them to figure what to do... |
The heavy casualties, the surrender of 300 soldiers, the daily abductions, the attack in Tarbela, the killing of heli-landed commandos, and the sting of defeats suffered by the security forces, have clearly had a demoralising effect on them.
| Poor guys. The Talibs are rubbing in the fact that on a scale of 1 to 10 they ain't squat. |
This effect has been exacerbated by the fear that by fighting their own people they will neither become shaheed nor ghazi, and if they die, would they have died in vain, and remain unsung, like those who lost their lives in Kargil.
| Life is tough. Decomposition's worse. |
After the army crackdown in East Pakistan in March 1971, the Bengali soldiers of the army had deserted and joined the Mukti Bahini resistance force. In the tribal areas, a number of desertions by paramilitary soldiers are reported to have taken place. One hopes and prays that the Pathan soldiers, who constitute nearly 30 per cent of the armyÂ’s rank and file, remain unaffected.
| Go ahead. Hope. Pray. Make to attempt to weed them out, take no measures to minimize any damage they might do. |
The government has blundered by sending the army to fight in an adverse operational environment, a so-called war on terror that the army knows it cannot win.
| Sounds like they've decided they can't win... |
History reacts sharply against those who refuse to learn from it. It did so against the United States in Vietnam and the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It is now reacting against the occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pakistan Army should have learnt this long ago.
| Vietnam caused the U.S. military to reexamine its most basic concepts, to rebuild itself from the squad level up, not only correcting the problems it had in Vietnam, but anticipating the new problems it was creating for itself and addressing them as well. The former Soviet Union collapsed due to its internal contradictions, to express it in Marxspeak. 40th Army was organized pretty much like all other Soviet armies, and like the Pak army of today and the U.S. Army that went into Vietnam, it was trained and doctrined for conventional warfare. The Russers have actually learned something from the problems they had in Afghanistan, though it took them awhile to get away from the idea of using cheap and poorly trained conscripts against guerillas. But notice that they won in Chechnya, and that the win they racked up was driven by intel. Notice also that despite having taken out important players, including Maskhadov and al-Walid, the Chechen rebellion didn't collapse until the key player — to whit, Basayev — was obliterated. |
The government must not go the way of those who ignored history and were punished. It must act with dispatch to extinguish the flames of insurgency before they engulf other areas.
| That would seem to indicate using intel resources to indentify and locate those driving the insurgency, and military forces to kill them - that's actually preferable to capturing them and playing games with courtrooms and human rights yahoos. Notice that the Bugti insurgency dropped off drastically when Foster Brooks was killed. |
If the negotiations with “the most corrupt politician in Pakistan” can be termed as being in the “national interest”, surely negotiating directly with the insurgents and reaching a settlement with them, would be in far greater national interest.
| More likely it would involve giving them power. But that's what the writer would really like to see. |
America would oppose this strategy because of its concern about cross-border infiltration.
| It would force us to start crossing the border routinely. |
This can be effectively addressed by prevailing upon the Americans to deploy the Afghan security forces on their side of the Durand Line to block all infiltration points.
| Putting all the responsibility on the Afghan side. The Paks don't do real well with responsibility. |
Since the Pakistani security forces are already deployed on their side of the Line, any large-scale cross-border infiltration through the two deployments would not be possible.
| Certainly no more possible than, for instance, into Kashmir. |
In the meantime, the government should initiate steps to restore the image of the army which has taken considerable battering in the last six years by transforming it from an instrument of a political party to an institution of the people.
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army. |