Queries over Pakistan's ability to hold onto terrain
Updated
Pakistani forces have begun a new offensive against Taliban fighters in Pakistan's northwest.
The military says it will take up to a week to clear an estimated 500 militants from Buner district near the Swat Valley. It follows an attack on the Taliban in nearby Lower Dir on the weekend ... that forced more than 30-thousand people to flee their homes. The Pentagon has welcomed the operations and urged Islamabad to stay on the offensive. The Taliban's creeping advances had left many in Washington fearing that Pakistan was on the verge of sliding into chaos.
Presenter: Joanna McCarthy
Speaker: Christine Fair, senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation in Washington
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FAIR: The Pakistan armed forces have not shown a very good ability at holding terrain once they have cleared it. Now we saw in Swat that, for example, the military go in, they would clear some terrain, but they wouldn't be able to hold onto it. So I think it is a very good sign that they are actually rallying and taking very seriously the threat that is there in Buner, but I think that people are really holding their breath to see how efficacious this is going to be, given that previous operations in the tribal areas, Waziristan, Bajuare, and then of course since the late summer of 2007 in Swat.
McCARTHY: Well, Washington of course was highly critical of the peace deal that Asif Ali Zardari struck with the Taliban in Swat back in February, allowing sharia law in return for a laying down of arms. Do those criticisms now appear justified?
FAIR: Well, they were justified from the get-go. Many Pakistanis like to point out that there were so-called sharia under Benazir Bhutto's term in 1994. There is night and day between the deal that was struck in '94 and the deal that was struck more recently.
First of all, this deal came on the back of a decisive military defeat by the world's, I believe, fourth largest army. In addition, the basic premise of the deal really hints around what's called these qazi courts. If it had been actually implemented as it was intended, it would have been I think far less scary than it turned out to be. The qazi courts are actual Islamist jurists and there was supposed to be an appeal mechanism if an individual thought that the justice meted out in the those qazi courts was in fact unfair and this had a historical tradition in Swat. So they would argue this isn't new.
The problem of course is that these so-called jurists have actually been intimidated by the Taliban. Sufi Mohammed and his associates have said that the Taliban who killed so many police and innocent civilians would not themselves be subject to trial in these very courts that they think are so fair. And, of course, in point of fact, the Taliban have run the show, they haven't given up their weapons, they haven't even honoured the most minimal of the commitments that they made to the government. So there should be no mistake that this deal that was forged recently was very much a capitulation.
McCARTHY: Both the Taliban and the government are saying they remain committed to the peace deal in principle. Do you see any likelihood that peace talks will be revived?
FAIR: Well, I mean the military have wanted this peace deal. So did the political leadership in the frontier, the ANP, which had previously been considered a largely secular party. And from the ANP's point of view, their polity was getting pretty upset because basically they were being affected negatively by both the militants as well as the military. The Pakistan military is a large conventional force. It has not shown a tremendous interest in regearing to become a counter insurgency force. So it has used some fairly heavyhanded tactics which have displaced hundreds-of-thousands of people and the estimates will vary. I have seen estimates in the 300,000 range, up to a million, when you look at all of the IDPs, the internally displaced persons from all the conflict affected areas in Pakistan. So I mean there are so many things that are so disconcerting. But what is absolutely clear is that none of the peace deals, and there have been numerous peace deals that the Pakistan army, with various degrees of political participation. None of those deals have actually brought peace and in fact every single one of them have ratified military defeat on the ground.
FAIR: I think there are a couple of issues that are still very much on concern. One is that the Pakistan armed forces have not shown a very good ability at holding terrain once they've cleared it. Now we saw in Swat that, for example, the military go in, they would clear some terrain, but they wouldn't be able to hold onto it. So I think it is a very good sign that they're actually rallying and taking very seriously the threat that is there in Buner, but I think that people are really holding their breath to see how efficacious this is going to be, given that previous operations in the tribal areas, Waziristan, Bajuare, and then of course since the late summer of 2007 in Swat.
McCARTHY: Well, Washington of course was highly critical of the peace deal that Asif Ali Zardari struck with the Taliban in Swat back in February, allowing sharia law in return for a laying down of arms. Do those criticisms now appear justified?
FAIR: Well, they were justified from the get-go. Many Pakistanis like to point out that there was so-called sharia under Benazir Bhutto's term in 1994. There is night and day between the deal that was struck in '94 and the deal that was struck more recently.
First of all, this deal came on the back of a decisive military defeat by the world's, I believe, fourth largest army. In addition, the basic premise of the deal really hints around what was called these qazi courts. If it had been actually implemented as it was intended, it would have been I think far less scary than it turned out to be. The qazi courts are actual Islamist jurists and there was supposed to be an appeal mechanism if an individual thought that the justice meted out in the those qazi courts was in fact unfair and this had a historical tradition in Swat. So they would argue this isn't new.
The problem of course is that these so-called jurists have actually been intimidated by the Taliban. Sufi Mohammed and his associates have said that the Taliban, who killed so many police and innocent civilians, would not themselves be subject to trial in these very courts that they think are so fair. And, of course, in point of fact, the Taliban have run the show, they haven't given up their weapons, they haven't even honoured the most minimal of the commitments that they made to the government. So there should be no mistake that this deal that was forged recently was very much a capitulation.
McCARTHY: Both the Taliban and the government are saying they remain committed to the peace deal in principle. Do you see any likelihood that peace talks will be revived?
FAIR: Well, I mean the military wanted this peace deal. So did the political leadership in the frontier, the ANP, which had previously been considered a largely secular party. And from the ANP's point of view, their polity was getting pretty upset because basically they were being affected negatively by both the militants as well as the military. The Pakistan military is a large conventional force. It has not shown a tremendous interest in regearing to become a counter insurgency force. So it has used some fairly heavyhanded tactics which have displaced hundreds-of-thousands of people and the estimates will vary. I've seen estimates in the 300,000 range, up to a million, when you look at all of the IDPs, the internally displaced persons from all the conflict affected areas in Pakistan. So I mean there are so many things that are so disconcerting. But what is absolutely clear is that none of the peace deals, and there have been numerous peace deals that the Pakistan army, with various degrees of political participation, none of those deals have actually brought peace and in fact every single one of them have ratified military defeat on the ground.
