Conventional warfare is characterised by the employment of large forces in accordance with a strategic plan that seeks to create a favourable relative-strengths situation at the desired point in time and space for the decisive battle. Centralisation is, therefore, inherent in the army’s structure.

Guerilla warfare on the other hand, is characterised by the employment of small forces at the time and place of the guerillas’ choosing. In it, there is no battlefield in the real 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 multiple directions, and then run to hit another day. Decentralisation is, therefore, inherent in the guerilla structure.

So, while the army’s strategy is based on concentration in time and space, the guerilla strategy is based on dispersion in time and space — hence the small blows they have struck in Dir, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Bajaur, Mohmand and Bannu. In this way the guerillas have forced dispersion on the army which, by operating in multiple directions across a vast expanse of territory, has overstretched itself. In a given relative-strengths situation when a force operates in spaces which are too vast for it to adequately influence and control, dilution of power takes place causing it to lose its effectiveness. This is what happened to the French and Americans in Vietnam, to the Soviets in Afghanistan and to the Pakistan Army in 1971 in the former East Pakistan.

Nobody knows, perhaps not even the army, the number of guerillas that are present in Fata and elsewhere in the northwest, and the number that was present in the current areas of operations when Operation Rah-i-Raast began, and in the weeks since then, the number that has escaped.

If Rah-i-Raast was planned on a certain estimate of the enemy, then that estimate was wide off the mark as all reports including ISPR briefings, suggest that while some were killed/captured, a substantial number managed to escape, which is why army columns are still being subjected to hit-and-run attacks with impunity.

When the guerilla knows that after hitting he cannot run, his fighting spirit is diminished. To make this happen, it is a compulsion to first isolate the area of operation by sealing it to make escape from it or ingress into it by other guerillas difficult. But since this compulsion would consume a maximum number of troops, it follows that operations should be conducted sequentially on a narrow front, not concurrently across a wide front. This would invariably be a slow and laborious process but one where success is almost guaranteed.

Thus Buner and Shangla, for example, could have been designated as one theatre, which after being isolated, could have been tackled by an operation that would then have had the potential of developing into a ‘tightening-the-noose’ manoeuvre by progressively constricting the space for the guerillas, or into a ‘hammer-and-anvil’ manoeuvre — until the guerillas in the theatre either surrendered or perished. Only then would the theatre be considered as cleared.
But if the required number of troops was not available for these manoeuvres, then Buner and Shangla could have been designated as two separate theatres, with each being tackled in turn.

Conducting these characteristic counter-insurgency manoeuvres is far easier in the terrain that obtains in the northwest of Pakistan than the jungles of Vietnam where the French were devoured by the Viet Minh and the Americans by the Viet Cong. That is why it is critical that the relative-strengths situation is modified through such manoeuvres at the point of decision by not allowing the guerillas to escape.

It was only after their defeat in Vietnam that the Americans learnt that they needed a superiority of at least 25 soldiers to a guerilla, whereas throughout the war they could muster a superiority of only five to one. Imagine what would have happened if the Soviets in Afghanistan had secured the Pak-Afghan border during the ‘jihad’ and isolated the Mujahideen from their logistics and handlers in Pakistan. Since they were unable to muster the required number of troops, they paid heavily for it.  History has many examples of operations that failed owing to lack of proportion between the means available and the desired aim. This is the main reason why counter-insurgency operations tend to drag on, affecting in the process the morale of the soldiers, leading to loss of combat effectiveness.

If the army goes into the Waziristans, the focal point of insurgency, by replicating the strategy and tactics it has employed in the ongoing operations, chances are that it would get bogged down, a situation that would have far-reaching implications, not only for the army itself but also for the state.

Phase 2 of a battle is initiated only when Phase 1 has been accomplished. The launching of Operation Rah-i-Nijaat in the Waziristans while Operation Rah-i-Raast is yet to accomplish its aims, appears, therefore, to be a premature undertaking. It is a decision that could wait.