The flames of insurgency

DEMOCRATIC governments serve the people. They enhance their quality of life. They protect, not kill, 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.

It sent in the army into these regions to crush the people whom it has dubbed as terrorists. 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. Afghanistan’s ruling Northern Alliance and India’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.

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.

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 army’s strategic plan is required to be unified in conception. Centralisation is, therefore, inherent in the army’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. Thus, the army’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. 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.

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.

After the SSG operation against Lal Masjid, they had warned of 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.

The insurgents fighting the army have close affinity with the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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 army’s rank and file, remain unaffected.

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.

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.

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. 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.

America would oppose this strategy because of its concern about cross-border infiltration. 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.

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.

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.

javedhussainpa@yahoo.com

Pakistanis deserve better options

WHILE Einstein may have thought of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, that is not what we believe in this part of the world. We are fed up with the military taking over every few years, but want to vote in a serving army chief as our president for the third time.

We are frustrated at the plunder and money-laundering of our previous prime ministers, but are willing to welcome the same faces back in the PM House, even if it means bending some rules. Mirza Ghalib predicted this mental aberration many years ago, when he said:

“Phir usi bewafa pey martey hein Phir wohi zindagi hamari hey”

(Besotted with one unfaithful, again/ Life’s the same as ever)

The president solemnly swore to uphold the Constitution of Pakistan and not engage in any political activities while in uniform. He has not just transgressed both these principles, but is also the second military chief in our part the world, who directly godfathers a ‘fumble-mumble’ political party called PML-Q.

On the political scene, it eludes all logic and commonsense to see politicians of great wisdom and stature blindly bowing before leaders who have little respect for democracy in their own parties. The most progressive of them has a life chairperson, whose only interest in life is the prime minister’s chair (for the third time) and something to annul her corruption cases.

Come September, and we face a difficult dilemma yet again. A military dictator demands to be elected as the president of the country for yet another term. He is willing to forget every oath that he took and is ready to change every rule in the book.

He violates Article 43 of the Constitution (notwithstanding its temporary validation obtained through palm-greasing the religious parties) by continuing to hold a second office of profit in the service of Pakistan. He himself signs an order that enables him to escape the applications of Article 63.

With Article 63 thrown out of the window, primarily to serve the insatiable greed of a single individual, it is now possible that the next president of Pakistan can be a person of unsound mind, criminal background, a loan defaulter or someone who has defamed the judiciary or the armed forces of Pakistan. (Does the description appear familiar?)

It is time to say a permanent farewell to the process of military interventions. It is best that this surgery is performed under a judicial anaesthesia. Nothing would boost the health of future courts and parliaments more than a clear-cut judgment that replaces the doctrine of necessity with the doctrine of constitutionality.

It is also time for the politicians to change the tenor of their politics. The wise, sagacious and progressive politicians of all parties need to shed the burden of their person-specific leadership and move forward to newer alliances and newer standards of political behaviour.

While the leaders build their private palaces in Surrey and Jeddah, the people of Pakistan continue to remain deprived, destitute and dissatisfied. They deserve better leaders and a better tomorrow.

When companies do not perform well, they often change their senior management. Pakistan too needs an en bloc change in its senior management.

Don’t the people of Pakistan deserve better options rather than the same old recycled ‘made over’ faces? The challenge for every thinking Pakistani citizen is no longer a choice between arrivals originating from Heathrow or Dubai. The challenge lies in creating newer democratic mechanisms that enable ethical, saner and ordinary people to take positions of higher leadership in Pakistan.

Is US determined to attack Iran?

WITH Iraq spiralling out of control, the Taliban regrouping in Afghanistan and occupied Palestine in a state of unprecedented turmoil, one would have expected the Bush administration to concentrate its energies on managing this unusually large constellation of problems.

Foreign policy in Washington is, however, currently not the preserve of professional diplomats or knowledgeable analysts. It has been hijacked by ideologues who view their plans to recreate the Greater Middle East as a divine mission that seeks legitimacy in biblical lore rather than international law.

This alone can explain the reports that the Bush administration has not yet abandoned plans to bring about a regime change in Iran. In its effort to ratchet up pressure, Washington decided last month to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s elite military branch, as a ‘specially designated global terrorist group’.

This will allow Washington to go after the group’s business operations and finances, the pretext being that the Guards have been supporting extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the region as well. While the US has in the past identified individual businesses, charities and extremist groups as engaged in terrorist activities, this would be the first such action against a national military unit.

Admittedly, America’s two primary interests in the Middle East are the security of Israel and access to the region’s oil resources. In Washington’s view, both these strategic interests are being threatened by Iran. Tehran’s nuclear programme, its support to Hezbollah and Hamas and now allegations of aid to pro-Iranian elements in Iraq and Afghanistan, have all led Washington to persuade the moderate Arab regimes to increase their cooperation with Israel, to counter what is perceived as a common threat to them.

To sweeten this offer, Washington decided to provide the pro-US regimes with massive arms packages that they neither need nor would be able to use. The rationale advanced is that these sophisticated arms would strengthen them against extremist regimes and dangerous ideologies. In return, these regimes are expected to help the US restore stability in Iraq and reduce Iranian influence.

In the meanwhile, the neocons in the administration continue to accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons to dominate the region and to attack Israel. They also claim that the Islamic regime has lost popular support and that a small nudge from the outside would be enough to topple it — clearly a repeat of the thesis propounded prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Independent analysts are, however, of the view that though President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have lost some of his popularity because of growing economic problems, any external threat would rally the entire nation behind his regime. Iranian military officials have warned that should the US carry out military operations against their country, they will have no hesitation in closing the Gulf and its approaches to oil tanker traffic, halting Iran’s export of 3.5 million barrels per day and disrupting oil exports.

This would hurt the Iranian economy, but its impact on the world’s economy would be worse. Moreover, with US troops tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington cannot come up with the number of troops needed to occupy a mountainous country of 75 million people, leaving the US with the option of air strikes only. But the failure of the Israeli air force in Lebanon last summer clearly indicates that the air strikes may not be enough.

None of this has deterred the US from warning that it was ‘keeping all options on the table’. Bush has hinted frequently that his administration might abandon diplomacy and turn to the military option. In a speech to the American Legion last month, the president warned that ‘we will confront this danger before it is too late’.

This led Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London to observe: ‘There is a real possibility that President Bush will feel compelled not to allow this problem to pass to his successor.’

It was, however, the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner’s statement warning that ‘we have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war’, that created a sense of urgency.

Calling the nuclear stand-off with Iran, ‘the greatest crisis’ of the present time, he warned: ‘we will not accept that the bomb is manufactured’. Given the fact that Kouchner, a long-time socialist, favoured a more moderate policy on issues such as Iran, his views were seen as another evidence of French policy on Iran coming closer to that of Washington.

Mr Ahmadinejad rejected it as not worthy of being ‘taken seriously’, though the Iranian media launched a withering attack on the French government, accusing it of ‘copying the White House’ and charging Sarkozy with having ‘taken on an American skin’. This was in line with Tehran’s oft-repeated declaration that the US would not dare attack Iran at a time when it is overstretched.

My meetings in Washington last month, however, gave me the impression that influential groups in Washington favour a surgical strike on Iran, pointing out that Washington’s difficulties have emboldened Iran into believing that it can continue to thwart US objectives in the region.

The Bush administration is also convinced that the next administration may not have the necessary resolve to carry out this mission, leading some analysts to the conclusion that nothing would deter it from pursuing its goal of bringing about a regime change in Tehran.

Their only hope was that the military high command and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, in particular, would resist any such adventure, aware as they were that the overstretched US military would suffer grave consequences.

Even pro-US regimes that view Iran with concern are likely to oppose US military action, fearing the negative fallout of such an action. The Sunni Arab leaders fear Iran’s nuclear ambitions and would like to see it cut down to size. But this wish is tempered by their recognition of the chaos and turmoil that would ensue.

There are nevertheless some political observers who are counselling that the US threat needs to be taken seriously. They fear that Tehran has been cut off from Washington for so long that there is widespread ‘ignorance and complacency about American motivations and intentions’, in Iran.

This may explain why Tehran appears oblivious to the impending danger, though it faces a possible third round of UN sanctions, a US-orchestrated international business and trade boycott and increasing military pressure. And yet, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, claims that ‘America’s power in the region is waning’ and that it is ‘facing defeat day after day’.

The inexorable march towards confrontation between the US and Iran reminds me of Barbara Tuchman’s well known 1962 book The Guns of August, in which she explained how totally unforeseen misconceptions, miscalculations and mistakes culminated in the horrible tragedy that wiped out an entire generation, during the First World War.

This study was so influential and profound that it led President Kennedy to advise his cabinet to read the book to help in dealing with the Cuban missile crisis. Are we witnessing a similar series of miscalculations by both Washington and Tehran that could lead them to cause incalculable disaster for themselves and the region?