Counterinsurgency in pakistan pdf

The United States should continue to make this position clear, as it began to do in Other states and international organizations, such as China and NATO, should issue similar statements. Indeed, the United States should enlist as many partners in this effort as possible. Anti-Americanism in Pakistan would likely make a coordinated message more effective in persuading Pakistan to alter its policy. Third, the United States needs to reduce it reliance on Pakistan where feasible. In other areas, however, the United States can seek alterna- tives if necessary.

For instance, Pakistan provides an important and affordable land bridge to move lethal and nonlethal supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan. The U. The United States should continue seeking alternative routes for resupply, including through Iran and Central Asia. The United States should continue U. Special Operations Forces training programs and ensure that goods and services given to Pakistan are appropriate for counterinsurgency purposes.

But it should withhold some aid until Pakistan makes dis- cernible progress. Washington has had mixed success in persuading Pakistan to change course, partly because U. The carrots offered include money and conventional weapons, which do not offer the strategic carrots Pakistan most values.

Successful persuasion requires a mixture of carrots and sticks. In , U. President Obama also offered additional military and economic assis- tance, as well as help in easing tensions with India. Some observers have focused on the periods of friction between the United States and Pakistan, including during the s. But there is a rich his- tory of cooperation. In a May meeting with U. We have known them as educators and as men and women engaged on missions of peace.

And again since the birth of Pakistan we have known them as messengers of your goodwill. The United States and Pakistan need to come together to develop a more-systematic strategy to deal with the challenges that threaten both countries. Acknowledgments This manuscript would not have been possible without the help of numerous individuals. James Dobbins provided a range of valuable comments, which signifi- cantly improved the quality of the manuscript.

John H. Gill, Peter Chalk, and Ahmed Rashid reviewed the manuscript and offered frank, insightful critiques. Joya Laha and Sean Halpin provided helpful research assistance and helped shepherd the manuscript through pro- duction. Most did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the information they provided, so we have not thanked any of them by name.

In , there was a 48 percent increase in terrorist attacks from levels, which killed 3, people and injured 7, But other areas of Pakistan, including Punjab, Figure 1. Militant groups increasingly resorted to suicide attacks, which killed or wounded a growing number of civilians. There was a 32 percent increase in sui- cide attacks in from levels, which killed 1, people and injured 3, In April , for example, mili- tants mounted a multipronged assault against the U. In addition, there were several serious international terrorist plots with links to Pakistan.

There were other plots to attack U. In Feb- ruary , Zazi pleaded guilty in U. In response to the growing violence and terrorist threats on Paki- stani soil, Pakistani security forces conducted a number of operations against militant groups in FATA and other parts of the country.

To answer these questions, we adopted several methodological approaches. Case studies offer a useful approach to help understand the motivations of Pakistani leaders and the results of their operations. In addition, Pakistan has been willing to target some militant groups, but not others.

These realities have enormous implications for the United States and its interests in Pakistan. Some U. Rustow and Kenneth Paul Erickson, eds. George and Timothy J. Coulam and Richard A. Smith, eds. The rest of the study is divided into several chapters.

First, it assesses the roots of the militant challenge in Pakistan. Third, it ana- lyzes the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism literatures to iden- tify key factors that have contributed to effective counterinsurgency operations. Since then, Pakistan has relied on irregular fighters and razakars volunteers , as well as regular fighters drawn from the mili- tary, paramilitary, and intelligence agencies. The chapter argues that, while beginning to use asymmetric warfare in , Pakistan significantly increased its support to mili- tant groups after it acquired a covert nuclear capability by and an overt nuclear capability by Before then, several instances in which Pakistan used substate actors led to conventional conflicts with 1 Pakistan has long tolerated anti-Shia groups and even Shia pogroms at different parts of its history.

See inter alia Vali R. Nuclearization permitted Pakistan to expand the scope, scale, and geographical boundaries of asymmetric conflict with limited fear of retaliation. Some also targeted the Pakistani state and orchestrated suicide attacks in major cities. The remainder of this chapter is divided into four sections, fol- lowed by our conclusions.

The second section explains the ways in which nuclearization enabled Pakistan to expand the jihad deeper into India and other countries, including Afghanistan. The third section argues that any U. The fourth describes the militant landscape in Pakistan and the connections that exist among different groups.

Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others supported seven major mujahideen groups operating in Afghanistan. See also Ashley J. Tellis, C. In fact, Pakistan has relied on nonstate actors to prosecute its for- eign policy objectives in Kashmir since its independence in In that year, the state mobilized lashkars tribal forces to seize Kashmir while the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, debated whether to join India or Pakistan.

The Pakistan Army supported the lashkars. Worried about being defeated by the lashkars, the maharaja asked New Delhi for military support. That war ended on Janu- ary 1, , with the establishment of a ceasefire line sponsored by the United Nations, which demarcated which areas were under Pakistani and which were under Indian control.

The ceasefire line was converted to a line of control during the Simla Accords, which concluded the end of the Indo-Pakistani war. In , Pakistan assessed that a wider indigenous insurgency could be fomented in Indian-administered Kashmir. As Stephen Cohen noted, Pakistan began intensively studying guerilla warfare during its engagement with the U.

Mitha that could fight the Soviets should they invade and occupy the country. It was trained to fight a guerrilla war, and Pakistani officers were brought to Fort Bragg and other facilities in the United States.

Case studies were written 6 As numerous writers have noted, Pakistan agreed to the terms of the anti-Soviet alliance out of a dire need to rebuild its armed forces after partition in which Pakistan did not receive its fair share of movable assets.

Moreover, most of the fixed assets remained with India as they were located there. India was supposed to pay Pakistan to compensate it for these lost assets and it was to provide other financial resources. However, India soon reneged. The few trainloads of supplies that India did dispatch was full of obsolete equipment or other materi- als deemed undesirable by Pakistan.

Because of British recruitment policies after the mutiny, there were no all-Muslim units. Given the logic of partition and the distribution of the armed forces, Pakistan received no unit in full strength and suffered a severe shortage of officers. Thus the haphazard process of partition gave rise to the intractable security competi- tion that persists. Given that Pakistan and India came into being as adversaries, Pakistan felt an urgent need to build its weaker armed forces.

In addition, India was relatively weak following its defeat in the war, and the Pakistani military appeared confident of victory following a skirmish with India in the Rann of Kutch, along the Indo-Pakistani border. Pakistani planners sought to ensure plausible deniability that regular forces were involved. The bulk of each company of about men comprised razakars and mujahideen. Recruited from Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, they were given special training.

Officers and a component of men from two paramilitary organizations, the Northern Light Infantry and the Azad Kashmir Rifles, accompanied the irregulars, as did a small number 9 Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, p. Cohen cites a few illustrative examples of these Paki- stan military studies of low-intensity conflict.

Many of the locations where Pakistan trained the irregular fighters were later used to train mujahideen for the Kashmir jihad launched in While Operation Gibraltar failed to ignite the desired indigenous rebellion against India, it did succeed in precipitat- ing the second conventional Indo-Pakistani conventional conflict, the war, which ended in a stalemate.

See Tellis et al. Swami used a number of classified Indian documents, which were subsequently declassified, that he obtained in his capacity as a journalist. Afghanistan argues that the treaty was signed under duress and furthermore that Pakistan was not a successor state to the British Raj. As such, Afghans argue that the treaty is void. Some argue that Paki- stan was a victim of U. Pakistan intensified these activities with active support from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others following the Soviet invasion.

Pakistan also expanded the capabilities of its premier intelligence agency, ISI. In the service of the jihad, Pakistan employed religious institutions and parties, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamiat-e- Ulema Islami, to establish Pakistan-based militant groups that could operate in Afghanistan.

Pakistan preferred Afghan militant factions that were Sunni Islamist, rather than Shia or secular, and that were ethnically Pashtun. This appeared to be a deliberate effort to ensure that Pashtun political aspirations would be channeled through religious—not ethnic—terms. As noted, Pakistan had already begun pursuing such policies in Afghanistan. Pakistan benefited from its alliance with the United States in that it received weapons, cash, and training of the military and ISI.

Moreover, Pakistan was allowed to continue receiving this support even though it had passed key nuclear redlines which would have precipitated arms cut off had the Press Amendment not been passed. This is explained in considerable detail in C. With massive international support, the mujahideen forced the Soviets to withdraw in In addition, Paki- stan used Pashtuns from the regular Pakistan Army to infiltrate into Afghanistan to assist mujahideen groups. These soldiers were under strict instructions not to reveal their identity.

If they were captured, Pakistan would deny they were from the army. First was the suc- cess of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. If mujahideen in Afghani- stan could defeat a nuclear-armed superpower, why could not a similar force succeed in Indian-administered Kashmir?

In the s, Pakistan had also provided exten- sive assistance to the Sikh ethnonationalist insurgency in the Punjab. By the s, U. Military aid to Pakistan could only be sup- plied through a presidential certification called the Pressler Amend- ment. It banned most economic and military assistance to Pakistan unless the U.

Bush declined to issue this certification, which triggered U. With the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, Pakistan redeployed many of the Afghan mujahideen to the Kashmir front and established training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Several indig- enous Kashmiri militant groups formed in response. Some of these groups began to lobby for independence, rather than union with Paki- stan, and some turned from violence toward political activism.

A new group of Pakistan- and Afghanistan-based groups directly competed with these older, more ethnically Kashmiri groups. When Pakistan began to introduce fighters from the Afghan jihad, the Pakistan-based groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and Harkat- ul-Jihad Islami, eliminated many indigenous and proindependence insurgents. They were hos- tile to the heterodox Sufi Islam practiced by Kashmiris in the valley.

Government Printing Office, , p. Fair and Sumit Gan- guly, eds. While indigenous Kashmiri militant groups were unwilling to destroy their sacred shrines, these foreign militants were much more inclined to do so.

Nielson in the urban areas of Srina- gar and Anantnag in the Muslim-dominated district of Kashmir and in the cities of Jammu and Udhampur in the Hindu-dominant district of Jammu.

The poll found almost no support in Kashmir, much less in Jammu, for unification with Pakistan. In the early s, Afghan state authority collapsed and governance fractured among a range of warlords and local commanders. That report details the atrocities of both the Indian security forces as well as the militant groups.

According to classified U. One example is its use of private-sector transportation companies to funnel supplies to Taliban forces, including ammunition, petroleum, oil, lubricants, and food. These companies operated vehicle convoys that departed Paki- stan late in the evening and, especially if carrying weapons and ammu- nition aboard, concealed the supplies beneath other goods loaded onto the trucks. There were several major supply routes. One began in Peshawar, Pakistan, and passed through Jalalabad in eastern Afghani- 27 During the Soviet jihad, Pakistan backed seven Pakistan-based militant groups, six of which were Pashtun dominated.

See Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, 81— Released by the National Security Archive. Another left Quetta and passed through Kandahar before ending in Kabul. Yet another began in Miramshah, Pakistan, and continued through Khowst and Gardez before entering the Afghan capital. While able to establish a semblance of order, the Taliban government lacked international legitimacy and gradually became an international pariah. Bin Laden had arrived in Afghanistan with the support of Mullah Omar in after spending time in Sudan and had installed many of the senior Arab fighters in residential complexes near Kandahar and Jalalabad.

Some senior U. Norton, House of Representatives, February 15, , p. The largest contingent in this force was British, which included 3, soldiers based in Helmand Prov- ince. Canada and the Netherlands also deployed sizable contingents. Yet Pakistani government officials appeared to interpret this shift as a signal that the U.

It helped fund construc- tion of the new Afghan parliament building and provided financial assistance to elected legislators. Some scholars consider this the only genuine jihad to establish Muslim supremacy in South Asia. Mulford, U. Shapiro and C.

Consequently, Pakistani jihad groups spread in larger numbers to Kashmir. Pakistan became even more aggressive following the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests. It launched a limited incursion into Indian-administered Kashmir to seize a small amount of territory in Kargil District.

Many analysts have argued that such a brazen incur- sion would have been unlikely before Pakistan had attained its overt nuclear status. While Pakistan had limited territorial aims, its use of army offi- cers as irregular fighters caused some analysts to reconsider whether nuclearization of the subcontinent would create long-term stability, as some nuclear theorists had predicted. Second, Pakistan used the possi- bility of nuclear escalation to galvanize international intervention on its behalf when the crisis intensified.

In April , General Musharraf noted that, even though nuclearization rendered large-scale conventional wars obsolete, proxy wars were still possible. Pakistan activated at least one missile base. Bruce Reidel, who served as a special assistant to the U. Lavoy, ed. However, the utility—and danger—of such signaling during a crisis lies in the mul- tiple interpretations adversaries may draw from them. With the development of a covert and then an overt nuclear capability, Pakistan could support militant groups with limited concern about retaliation.

Christine Fair, Brian A. Jones, Nathaniel Shestak, and Ashley J. Indeed, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad have long operated throughout India, and Deo- bandi groups have begun operating in Pakistan in recent years. Lashkar-e-Taiba and some Deobandi militant groups have also been operating in Afghanistan against U. This paper is forthcoming in an edited volume by James Wellman. These sectarian tanzeems also have overlap- ping memberships with other Deobandi militant groups, including the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, which have strong connections to the JUI.

These groups targeted Sunni Muslims and obtained funding from Iran, although they have largely disappeared. These militant groups are best understood as a series of loose networks.

Individual groups may be hierarchi- cally structured, but there is little or no overall command across groups. A range of transnational terrorist, criminal, and insurgent groups have adopted networked strategies and organizational structures. As John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt argued, 63 Many of these groups have been proscribed numerous times, only to reemerge. Many now operate under new names. This book uses the names that are likely to be most familiar to readers.

Indeed, sectarian violence increased sharply in Pakistan in from and previous years. However, anti-Shia militias perpetrated the overwhelming major- ity of these attacks.

There is no single cen- tral leader or commander; the network as a whole but not neces- sarily each node has little to no hierarchy. There may be multiple leaders. Decision-making and operations are decentralized and depend on consultative consensus-building that allows for local initiative and autonomy.

While Sufi Mohammad was jailed, his militant son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, took over the organization. As Figure 2. Between August and April 1, , there were at least 30 drone strikes which may have killed as many as people. While the political leadership complain about this, it is widely believed that the targeting of militants in FATA is done with the tacit knowledge and input from the Pakistan Army, public displays of outrage notwithstanding.

He was eventually killed by a U. UAV strike in In late February , two commanders, Mullah Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, appeared to set aside their differences with Baitullah Mehsud temporarily and forged the Shura Ittehad-ul- Mujahideen, though this alliance was mostly a facade.

A range of networks allied with the TTP pushed into areas that had previously been peaceful, such as the Mohmand, Orakzai, and Kurram Agencies. Pakistan has con- sidered Maulvi Nazir an ally because he helped oust or kill numerous Uzbeks in South Waziristan. He is considered to be a dedicated foe of U. Gul Bahadar has had a number of differences with Baitullah Mehsud. It is not clear what this alliance means for Pakistan or for the United States and allies in Afghanistan.

One of their most success- ful methods was to exploit local grievances: socioeconomic concerns among local Pakistanis; Pakistani governance failures, including inad- equate security and justice; and frustration with government corrup- tion.

Local militant commanders in FATA pressured political agents to provide services. They established functional—and draconian—police functions and dispute resolution. The courts established in Swat, run by qazis, or Islamic jurists, required adding new qazis when the case- load of a given court exceeded cases.

No such provision existed in the mainstream courts. Indeed, local populations were 71C. Many Pakistanis who refused to be co-opted simply fled and joined the swell- ing ranks of internally displaced persons.

By , the situation was grave. Fears that the TTP and its allies would reach Islamabad were misplaced, partly because various TTP allies had already established a presence there.

Punjab-based groups have links with the TTP and at least two of them, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad, have conducted suicide attacks in Pakistan.

Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Masood Azhar was close to the Taliban. Jaish-e-Mohammad, which shares considerable membership and infrastructure with Lashkar-e- Jhangvi, was the first South Asian Islamist group to use suicide attacks in the region. Oppel, Jr. Predator and Reaper strikes in Baluchistan. The Afghan Taliban focused on ousting foreign forces in Afghanistan, overthrowing the Karzai regime, and restoring the Taliban role in governing Afghanistan.

Some of these groups, especially the TTP, began to target military, intelligence, and civilian leaders in the Pakistani gov- ernment. Recent attacks and plots—such as the successful July attack in London, the transatlantic plot foiled in , the plot to attack U. While the actual number of suicide attacks dramatically increased in , the change in targeting seems to have occurred in , perhaps in response to U.

Alan Kronstadt, U. This attack was reportedly in retaliation for the U. In addition, Pakistanis were opposed to army combat operations against militants in Pakistan. Polling results in May and July suggested that the public was opposed to peace deals and was increasingly supportive of military action.

While militant groups in Pakistan pose a threat to the state, the region, and the international community more broadly, Pakistan may be unable to conduct an effective campaign as long as it uses some groups as assets. It has been willing to tolerate near-term risks associ- ated with using militants in India and Afghanistan.

But ter- minating links with the panoply of militant networks in Pakistan will be a long-term effort. They fought in Afghanistan in support of the Taliban and share much of the Deobandi infrastructure with the Taliban. London: Zed Books, , pp. In contrast, U. During the s, however, Pakistan faced numerous sanctions because of its nuclear program. In response, Pakistani forces conducted a series of military campaigns.

The next chapter examines the effectiveness of these efforts. Pakistan provided extensive land, air, and seaport accessibility, as well as a host of other logistical and security-related provisions. But as the war in Afghanistan spiraled, several indigenous insurgencies began to develop on the Pakistani side of the border. When Pakistan expanded its scope of operations, local insurgencies continued to develop across FATA and adjoining areas. In late , several local militant groups nominally gathered under the TTP umbrella, under the leadership of the South Waziristan—based Baitullah Mehsud.

Mehsud and allied militants responded to Pakistani incursions with a brutal suicide bombing campaign throughout Pakistan. The purpose of this chapter is to redress this gap. This analysis does not offer a comprehensive assessment of all Pakistani operations since , but rather briefly examines some of the most important campaigns: 1 C.

Christine Fair, and Seth G. Figure 3. The chapter uses a comparative case study methodology to assess how effectively these campaigns achieved their goals—and why. Some intelligence assessments indicate that mili- tant control of territory increased during this period. The deals called for the military to withdraw from forward locations, compensated the mil- itants for their losses, and allowed them to retain their small arms.

This process of engaging the government also endowed local militants with a degree of political legitimacy that they did not previously have. In return, the militants promised not to harbor foreign fighters or to set up parallel governments. The deals did not have adequate verification or enforcement mechanisms and were usually broken quickly. As these cases illustrate, Pakistan has not established a counterin- surgency doctrine that focuses on using security forces—including 2 See Alexander L.

Pakistani Operations against Militants 35 Figure 3. The second assesses the campaigns as comparative case studies. The third draws several lessons across the cases and exam- ines public opinion data. The final section outlines key conclusions. Pakistani Forces Pakistan has generally employed three kinds of forces in these opera- tions: the regular army, the paramilitary Frontier Corps, and the Fron- tier Constabulary.

Each of these forces is discussed below. A robust accounting of security operations is not publicly available. Pakistani Operations against Militants 37 45 infantry battalions, and some 58 Frontier Corps wings. Past conflicts with India have involved high- altitude operations, as well as operations across the plains and desert.

The army has traditionally configured its forces to fight a conventional war with India. Those hopes largely dis- sipated as Pakistan remained reluctant to develop such a doctrine. In fact, General Kayani often stated that the Pakistan Army would not become a counterinsurgency force; rather, the bulk of the army would remain deployed along the Indian border, ready to defend Pakistan in the event of an Indo-Pakistan war.

We thank Jack Gill for pointing this out. Each division holds three brigades and is commanded by a major general. A brigade is com- manded by a brigadier and has three or more battalions. A battalion has roughly to soldiers under the command of a lieutenant colonel. This group, cre- ated in with active support from U.

During the s, for example, the Special Services Group engaged in covert activities in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. Frontier Corps The Frontier Corps is a federal paramilitary force that belongs to the Ministry of Interior but may be under control of the army command during specific operations. It consists of two separate forces, Frontier Corps NWFP and Frontier Corps Baluchistan, with separate inspec- tors general controlling each; the combined end-strength is 80, Frontier Corps officers are seconded from the Pakistan Army and are rotated in and out of the Frontier Corps.

This has some appeal, since Frontier Corps cadres are recruited from FATA and therefore have local knowledge, language skills, and a refined sense of the human ter- rain. But there are questions about using the Frontier Corps in this way. Some elements of the Frontier Corps have facilitated insurgent movement across the Durand Line the de facto border between Paki- stan and Afghanistan.

David Kilcullen, who served as special adviser for counterinsurgency to U. Since at least , there have been con- sistent reports that elements of the Frontier Corps have been helping the Taliban. For recent revelations about Frontier Corps complicity and a recent U. The Frontier Constabulary outposts in the capital and throughout the Pashtun belt are targeted systematically by insurgents.

The Frontier Constabulary is generally ill-prepared for this fight because its forces are poorly trained and inadequately equipped, with outdated arms and little personal-protection equipment.

Its members have been killed in large numbers or have simply deserted the force, fearing that they would be killed. We do not offer a comprehensive assessment of all Pakistani operations, but rather of some of the most important campaigns since Pakistan agreed to assist U. These objectives were ironed out during negotiations in September In the end, Pakistan participated in Operation Enduring Freedom in two major ways. First, it permit- ted overflight and landing rights for U.

But this section focuses only on militants fleeing Afghanistan into Pakistan. Also see Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, pp. Ambassador to Pakistan, August 27, Alan Kronstadt, Pakistan-U. Anti-Terrorism Cooperation, Washington, D. Pakistan also established two quick-reaction forces from the Special Services Group in Kohan and Wana to provide local Pakistan com- manders the ability to deploy troops quickly. In October , for example, Frontier Corps forces clashed with militants crossing the border around Nawa Pass in Bajaur agency.

In December , Pakistan deployed a mixture of forces to Khyber and Kurram tribal agencies during U. In most cases, however, Pakistan retained the Afghans or Pakistanis that it captured. Air Force, February ; Paul L. That war resulted in the independence of Bangladesh. In addi- tion, the Pakistani military was used in Baluchistan between and Pakistani operations in Baluchistan since have resulted in the deaths of key insurgent leaders and effectively diminished the local insurgency.

Despite these drawbacks, one of the most significant objectives of Operation Enduring Freedom—to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan—was achieved, and Pakistan played an important role. And Pakistan was no longer a pariah state. The situation was euphoric. Musharraf was on the cover of every magazine and newspaper. But Pakistan has selec- tively observed such detention cutoffs. The state has held numerous persons without filing charges against them well beyond this legal period, including President Asif Zardari.

The col- lapse of the Taliban regime triggered a flow of fighters into Pakistan, many of whom settled near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This meant clearing notable portions of South Waziristan of foreign fighters. Major units included the following: 34 M. The Pakistan Army began to infiltrate South Waziristan in early Previously, one wing of the Frontier Corps in each of the two agencies—the Tochi Scouts and the South Waziristan Scouts—was available for operations.

Units of the Special Services Group and com- mand units of the quick reaction force were flown in regularly to carry out operations. Two army brigades also set up checkpoints along the border in Waziristan. The administration conducted several shuras, consulted maliks, and examined intelligence from local informants to identify over 70 Ahmadzai Wazir tribesmen that were supporting for- eign fighters.

On January 8, , the army conducted a similar operation in South Waziristan but was ambushed on its way back. Later that night, the Pakistan Army camp in Wana came under rocket attack from three sides. Over the next several nights, militants fired more rockets on the army camps in Wana and a military check post in Shulama, west of Wana.

The operation involved a day cordon-and-search effort across a km2 area west of Wana. At am, they burst in. Pakistani Operations against Militants 49 had been killed, and 14 others had been taken hostage. The militants also immobilized, destroyed, or burned roughly a dozen army trucks, as well as pickups, armored personnel carriers, and light artillery. Paki- stani forces also faced tough resistance in the villages of Dzha Ghun- dai, Shin Warsak, and Karikot.

The cordon drawn around Kalosha and the surrounding villages failed to retard the mobility of militants, some of whom dispersed through a network of tunnels. The operation was launched with personnel, but by March 19, roughly 7, army and Frontier Corps troops were battling the militants at several locations in a km2 stretch southwest of Wana. The operation also involved more than a dozen Cobra helicopters and Pakistan Air Force fighter jets.

On June 10, the Pakistani government deployed 10, army troops and U. The Pakistan Air Force struck at dawn, using precision weapons against nine compounds. Pakistan Army forces used indirect artillery fire and rocket attacks from helicopter gunships. Helicopters dropped off Spe- cial Operations Task Force troops to search the compounds, and infan- try troops initiated a simultaneous operation to clear the valley. Later, 3, additional troops were brought in to help clear the valley.

During the operation, four soldiers were killed and 12 were injured, while over 50 militants were killed. The Pakistani military, with intelligence assis- tance from U. SOF and CIA operatives, partially eliminated a major propaganda base and militant stronghold, which included a facility for manufacturing improvised explosive devices. The haul from a large underground cellar in one of the compounds included two truckloads of TV sets, computers, laptops, disks, tape recorders, and tapes. The Pakistan Army tried to depict these deals as part of a long-standing precedent in the region, noting that the British negotiated with local Pashtun tribes in NWFP during their rule.

However, these deals differed in many ways from those of the British. All RAND monographs undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity. Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Related Products. Terror Plots Jun 21, Christine Fair, Counterinsurgency in Pakistan.

Anit Mukherjee anitm yahoo. National Intelligence Esti- International Studies. They counterinsurgency to be successful, and for any U. The tribes its counterinsurgency strategy. In fact, at the time of independence from between hard and soft power, between British India in , they joined Pakistan under consti- military and socioeconomic strategies. Islamabad has honored these commitments, rendering it unable to establish its authority.

With a dismal track record in counter- in the region, resulting in little modernization and eco- insurgency and a traditional outlook focused solely on nomic development. The The locals overwhelmingly oppose military action in the self-proclaimed invincibility of the armed forces initially region and are consequently unwilling to side with the prompted it to use a firepower-intensive approach, central government in its quest to eliminate extremist demonstrated by the frequent use of weapons like heli- cadres.

The tribal opposition mainly stems from three cul- copter gunships and artillery. The use of brute force tural norms: hospitality, independence, and solidarity.

But tion,9 and then supported their ethnic kin in the Taliban when these heavy-handed operations fail—as they are as it fought a civil war to establish an Islamic state in bound to—the army has been clueless about alterna- Afghanistan.

Pakistani territory. Not only was this seen in the tribal Over the past four years, the army has failed to create belt as a direct attack on the ethnic cohesion of Pashtuns, an adequate balance between hard and soft power, but it established popular narrative in which Musharraf between military and socioeconomic strategies. This is betrayed the principle of Islamic solidarity.

The in — Lessons from the Indian extremists from an invading foreign power. The army is now decade-long insurgency in Kashmir, where the Indian widely perceived to be party to the crime and thus also military faced a steep learning curve but eventually a legitimate target.

Moreover, anyone who spies for managed to employ an effective strategy. As in the tribal belt, in Kashmir spies intimidate the population further and eliminate there was tremendous resentment against the central even the minutest possibility of defection. A large population— especially since Islamabad has long relied upon locals for especially Muslims in the Kashmir Valley—was also sym- information about the region.

The insurgency was also constantly replenished from outside. Despite the differences between the two case studies, their similarities make a study of the Indian Moreover, the convergence of so many Islamist actors model relevant for Pakistani forces.

For India, success was varied Islamists have managed to transcend sectarian based on three critical elements: a sustained, large military and ethnic boundaries and collaborate under the banner presence; effective civil administration; and development. The first element of are now reportedly operating from the tribal belt. This success was the use of military force to eliminate extremists— increases the human and capital resources available to those unwilling to negotiate—and create conditions for the enemy while simultaneously making it impossible for a political settlement.

The importance of the military the state to track funding and communication channels aspect cannot be overstated. Without tackling the active and links among traditionally disparate groups. Any military fighting an insurgency must shut In Pakistan, the military component should involve off the avenues by which new recruits join enemy ranks.

In hijacking the popular discourse bolster extremist outfits. The there are hundreds of aspiring suicide bombers. Learning by Doing Sporadic—as opposed to sustained—military operations are certain to mitigate the desired deterrent effect.

The Indian military is the only organization familiar The Indian forces took two key steps.