statism watch

Leaving aside domestic crises for a moment, let’s have a close look at Pakistan and the growing inflammation in the tribal areas. We know that the US airlifted the Taliban out of Afghanistan and into the Pakistani tribal areas during the invasion of Afghanistan, in the infamous ‘airlift of evil’. We know that the CIA funded these same insurgent groups – then known as ‘muhajideen’ – during the Russian war in Afghanistan. We know, from a Press TV report, that the CIA maintains secret bases in Pakistan for their drone fleet and god knows what else. We know that the Pakistani military intelligence, the ISI – a client organization of the CIA – is running the ‘terrorist camps’ in Pakistan as Omar Khyam revealed. And finally, we know that the CIA isn’t averse to funding ‘Al-Qaeda’ insurgent groups (within Iran) to destabilize the region, generally, as Sy Hersh has reported. So what are we to make of the insurgency in the SWAT, pitting the CIA’s former(?) fundamentalist pawns versus Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps‘ Pakistan won’t devote their regular army to the operation , since it decamped to the border with India following the attacks on Mumbai. (Another highly suspect operation.) And the CIA has been bombing the hell out of Pashtun villages in the mountains, so if they’re not covertly fronting yet another insurgency, they’re certainly flushing the players onto the field and enabling destabilization. Though the thesis of the article below is one of incompetence and corruption spawning tribal genocides and cross-border terror, perhaps the lavish amounts of foreign aid that continue to prop up the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus are simply the reward for a job well done.

Flashback: Pakistan is ‘abdicating to the Taliban,’ says Clinton | US military may escalate ‘war on terror’ by striking deeper into Pakistan | Report: CIA runs secret bases in Pakistan | Don’t-ask-don’t-tell Policy: Pakistan and U.S. Have Tacit Deal On Airstrikes | US Allowed Taliban, Al-Qaeda Airlift Evacuation

Mustafa Qadri, The Guardian UK
May 3, 2009

The answer to why Pakistan’s mighty army seems impotent against Taliban insurgents is that it is more mafia than military

No institution dominates Pakistan like its army. The armed forces account for 20% of Pakistan’s national budget, totalling $5bn last year according to official statistics. But the actual figure, already staggering for a country with high levels of illiteracy and malnutrition, is likely to be much higher. The army has been practically unaccountable since the very foundation of the country – last year’s figures were the first it has publicly released since 1965.

Those aren’t the only imposing figures. It has some 650,000 active soldiers and another half million in reserve, and internal discipline – strict loyalty to the high command among the rank and file – is very high.

Every one of Pakistan’s democratically-elected civilian leaders has been forced to abdicate by the army. A general has directly ruled the country for 34 of its 62 years of existence.

With this vice-like grip on power, many are wondering how a rural insurgency armed with basic weapons has managed to overrun so much of the country. The answers have much to do with the Pakistan army itself.

Part of the problem is that the army is equipped for a conventional war against its historical adversary to the east, India, and not the type of insurgency being waged by the Taliban on the frontier to the west. Its operations in the tribal areas have been imprecise, leading to the destruction of many thousands of civilian lives and livelihood. Up to a million are believed to have been displaced by the conflict.

“Collateral damage always strengthens the Taliban, it helps them get more public support,” says Abdul Hakim (not his real name), a journalist from Dir, a tribal agency, next to the Swat valley, in which the Taliban are slowly moving.

But there have been only limited, poorly-coordinated attempts to re-engage with communities devastated by armed operations against the Taliban. As a result the Army and government authorities have sheepishly ended up signing peace deals with the Taliban over the past four years. They have all consistently broken down, the Taliban using the lull in hostilities to regroup and rearm.

The most recent peace deal, over the Swat valley, is on the verge of collapse owing to continued Taliban operations in neighbouring areas.

There are lingering doubts about the Army’s resolve to combat the Taliban too, as has been suggested when it initially sent up a lightly armed squad of paramilitaries to fight the Taliban in the Buner valley, just below Swat, even though the region is close to the nation’s capital.

Another factor is the fact that many of the army’s soldiers involved in operations are Pashtun like the Taliban. This has left the high command nervous about tackling the insurgents head-on for fear of causing rifts within the ranks. Although far from a mutiny, many soldiers have refused to fight their fellow tribesman or have surrendered and deserted.

But that has not prevented the army from engaging in operations that have been highly destabilising for tribal Pashtun communities in the affected areas. People fleeing the conflict in Swat and Bajaur, a tribal agency to the west on the border with Afghanistna, told me they felt that the army was, in fact, targeting them and not the Taliban. Some argued this was because the army feared Taliban reprisals. Others insisted they were being targeted because of their support for the Pashtun nationalist Awami National party, which runs the North West Frontier province government.

The truth of rumours such as these, common in Pakistan, are difficult to quantify. But one need not look to rumours to understand why the Pakistan army has failed to defeat the Taliban.

The army has a long history of strategic incompetence stretching back to the very first war the country fought with India in 1948. On that occasion, tribal militants from the regions now in open insurrection against Pakistan flooded into Indian-controlled Kashmir. After overwhelming Indian soldiers there, they promptly went on a binge of rape and looting while the army looked on.

Again at war with India, in 1965, the better-equipped Pakistan army lost more ground, and tanks, than its adversary. But perhaps the army’s darkest moment was the 1971 war that lead to the creation of Bangladesh. That conflict saw Pakistan troops involved in widespread acts of extermination against the indigenous Bengali population of what was, at the time, known as East Pakistan.

The Hamoodur Rahman Commission held in Pakistan following that war found large swathes of the high command to be deeply negligent – the commander of Pakistani forces in East Pakistan, the report revealed, was involved in sexual misconduct even as his troops were killing, and being killed, on the battlefield.

In 1999, an ambitious Pakistani general by the name of Pervez Musharraf devised the tactically brilliant, but strategically near-suicidal, plan to invade Kargil, an Indian mountain post in Kashmir. That gamble nearly led to nuclear war, and almost certainly led to a military coup later that year.

How does one explain these failures? There can be no one explanation. But if there is an overriding message from these debacles, it is that the army is ill-equipped to defend the state because it has captured much of the bedrock of the state to which it is totally unaccountable.

According to Ayesha Siddiqua, in her seminal study, “Military Inc”, the army’s private business assets are worth around $10bn and it owns a handsome share of the country’s business and land. The generals, as a result, appear to be more interested in leveraging control over businesses, properties and politics.

Yet, the army’s power is such that although Pakistan’s private media have a commendable record of criticising the country’s civilian politicians, criticism of the men in uniform is rare – save during periods of crisis under direct military rule, like the dismissal of the chief justice in 2007.

It would be unfair, however, to criticise the army without acknowledging the pivotal role played by its greatest patrons – the United States, and, to a lesser extent, China. Since the 1950s, both countries have lavished military and political support on the Pakistan army.

“Nobody has occupied the White House who is friendlier to Pakistan than me,” is what US President Richard Nixon told Pakistan’s then military dictator, Yahya Khan, at a 1970 dinner in Washington, on the eve of the murderous war in East Pakistan. More recently, former President George Bush’s praise for Pervez Musharraf has become the stuff of folklore.

The army has been rewarded by its foreign patrons despite its incompetence and unaccountability. In the process, civilian political life has been grotesquely stunted, leading the democratic process to be replaced by a crude kleptocracy where non-military leaders represent personal dynasties and not the people. [Ed. Note: Or perhaps they're doing their job exactly as directed.]

Is it any wonder, then, that the army struggles to find a concerted strategy for defeating the Taliban?

Source | See also under Pakistan: Pakistan is ‘abdicating to the Taliban,’ says Clinton | Mumbai attacks suspect alleges torture, retracts confession | US military may escalate ‘war on terror’ by striking deeper into Pakistan | Pakistan restores outspoken judge | Pakistani police attack opposition march for independent judiciary | Not very cricket: Witnesses report Pakistani security abandoned convoy prior to attack | Pakistani officers helped plan Mumbai attacks, says India | Report: CIA runs secret bases in Pakistan | Indian Mumbai dossier details gunmen’s calls with handlers | India to create national spy agency in wake of Mumbai attacks | Former ISI Chief: Mumbai And 9/11 Both ‘Inside Jobs’ | Indian Intelligence Provided SIM Cards to Mumbai Gunmen | Mumbai Attacks Politicize Long-Isolated Elite | Mumbai terror attacks: Rice calls for ‘total transparency’ from Pakistan | CIA Foreknowledge of the Mumbai Attacks | ‘Fair-skinned, blonde’ assailants began attack in Mumbai | Mumbai Attacks Blamed On Al-Qaeda As Pretext For U.S. Military Response | Terror strikes Mumbai | Don’t-ask-don’t-tell Policy: Pakistan and U.S. Have Tacit Deal On Airstrikes | Death toll climbs after U.S. air strike in Pakistan | US Incursion Turned Back by Pakistan Army | Bush secret order to send special forces into Pakistan | Pakistan fury over ‘US assault’ | Musharraf resigns as Pakistan president | Key Benazir Bhutto assassination witness shot dead | CIA, Pakistani ISI have long, complicated relationship | U.S. Intel Officer: Al Qaeda Leadership Allowed To Operate Freely in Pakistan | Afghanistan suggests Pakistan responsible for embassy bombing | Bhutto report: Musharraf planned to fix elections | Video: ‘The most conclusive evidence’ Bhutto was shot | Police abandoned security posts before Bhutto assassination | Bhutto assassinated | Benazir Bhutto: Bin Laden Murdered | Terror accused refuses to discuss links to Pakistan secret service, family threatened | London terror plotter was ‘hardened’ in ISI camp | US Allowed Taliban, Al-Qaeda Airlift Evacuation

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at 2:05 pm and is filed under militarization, terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.