Pragmatic Euphony  

A recipe for disaster.

The Pakistan armed forces have launched a ferocious assault on the jehadi positions in Swat and surrounding areas. Reports suggest that heavy artillery, fighter air crafts and helicopter gunships have been used against the jehadi positions. Any one familiar with this kind of weaponry would be aware of the kind of collateral damage caused by such attacks.

Many in the US administration are hailing this as a proof of the will and resolve of the Pakistan army to take on the jehadis. They are blatantly wrong. The option being exercised by Pakistan army is the easier option: of strafing the complete area, a la Vietnam. The right option — and obviously the more difficult one — for the Pakistan army would be to put boots on ground and do real counterinsurgency. Let the soldiers target the jehadis while limiting the collateral damage caused to innocent civilians and winning their hearts and minds. That’d be nearly impossible for any Pakistani general to achieve. How does he justify his action by his troops against their religious brethren and countrymen, extremists who are ostensibly fighting for what the current-day Pakistan stands for — Islam?

One of the foremost thinkers on modern counterinsurgency, General Dave Petraeus, heads the US Central Command. Pakistan happens to be a part of his jurisdiction.  He has simplified the COIN doctrine in to three actionable stages: Clear, Hold and Build. Pakistan army seems to be in the first stage of COIN operations in Swat. What it forgets is that Clear stage involves clearing the designated area of insurgents, not clearing it of all forms of life. If it continues this way, there will be nothing left for the Pakistan army to hold and build, except some barren piece of charred land. Would Petraeus approve of such mindless destruction of own villages and towns as part of a COIN operation?

Pakistan army has earlier tried the same tactics to quell the Baluch uprising. However unlike the Baluch uprising, which is propelled by an ethno-regional aspiration, the insurgency in Swat is for a religious cause. The sway of the Islamist cause is not restricted to FATA or NWFP. It has a pan-Pakistan appeal, in fact even an international appeal among the Muslims. For a declared Islamic country — where the society has also been increasingly radicalised — this is more of an ideological battle than a military fight. The Pakistan army may have partially succeeded in Baluchistan, but the different motives and ideological causes in Swat will breed even more jehadis all over Pakistan and attract a few of other nationalities as well.

It is interesting to note that even now the Pakistan army is moving in only against the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan army and the ISI still continue to maintain their relations with the Afghan Taliban. It is a throwback to the Musharraf era where Pakistan used to kill or hand over an Al Qaeda Number Two or Number Three every time the military dictator was under pressure from the US. The beginning of Musharraf’s fall started with the military action in the Red Mosque at Islamabad, which turned the jehadis against the Pakistani security establishment. Will the Swat offensive — like the Red Mosque incident — mark another turning point in the attitude of the jehadis against the Pakistan army? Will this antipathetic action against the Pakistani security establishment involve the jehadis of all ilk — the Pak Taliban, the Afghan Taliban and numerous other groups like the JuD in Punjab?

Pakistan army’s track record in all its wars against India has proved that it is incapable of successfully waging a conventional war. The recent action in Swat confirms that it is incapable of even conceptluasing and planning, forget about winning, a counterinsurgency conflict.