Pakistan: Now or Never?

Pakistan: the next two weeks critical?

The Pakistan Army is fighting to regain control of the Buner valley to stop a Taliban advance deeper into the heartland, a battle that could determine the course of action the United States adopts in the near future.

Two weeks is what U.S. Central Command chief General David Petraeus is giving the Pakistani establishment to destroy the Taliban in Buner, some 60 miles from Islamabad, and begin to reverse the tide in the rest of the northwest region, according to Fox News.

It quoted Petraeus as saying that the Pakistanis had “run out of excuses” and were finally serious about combating the threat from the Taliban and al Qaeda. But because of a history of offensives that were not carried to their conclusion and even ended up in a reversal of positions, the U.S.military had suspended judgment. It would wait to see concrete action by the government to finish off the Taliban who remained in control of parts of Buner.

From unemployed teachers to ghost schools in Pakistan

Often it’s the small details that bring alive the tragedy of a nation. I recommend reading this story on IRIN about how newly qualified school-teachers are unable to take up jobs in Pakistan’s Swat valley because the government is not functioning well enough to appoint them to vacant posts. 

It quotes a 25-year-old as saying that his impoverished family had worked hard to send him to school and on to teacher-training. “We have been waiting for two years to be appointed. But this is being delayed. We are without jobs. We cannot support our families. The government has failed to help us at all,” he said. It also quotes an education department official in Swat as saying that posts were lying empty in schools as many teachers had fled the Swat valley, where the government concluded a peace deal with Taliban militants earlier this year. “But we can make no new appointments as we have no instructions from the government, plus the militants control everything anyway.”

The story is not as eye-catching as the burning of girls’ schools. But the notion of a poor family which must have scrimped and saved to send a son to teacher-training only to discover that he could not get a job is still heart-breaking, if only because its very ordinariness makes it easier to relate to.

The Pakistan Army and civilian democracy

The Pakistan Army has been getting a lot of flak over the past week or so for its alleged failure to take a tough line against Taliban militants expanding their reach across Pakistan’s north-west.  And although Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani issued a statement promising to fight the militants and security forces began a new offensive, doubts remain about the military’s willingness to take on Islamist groups that it once nurtured as part of its rivalry with India.

Among a spate of articles about Pakistan’s powerful military, Newsweek ran a piece headlined “Pakistan’s Self-Defeating Army”. It argued that far from serving as a bulwark against chaos, the military had helped destabilise Pakistan by undermining the development of a civilian democracy in the decades since the country was founded in 1947.

David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency expert, called during a Congressional hearing for “fundamental, root and branch reform of the Pakistani military, and bringing it firmly under the authority of civilian elected officials”. Arguing that U.S. aid should be channelled into building up the police rather than the military, he said this ”would protect the Pakistani people, improve counterinsurgency performance, enhance the rule of law and weaken the stranglehold of the army over the civilian leadership of Pakistan.”

Pakistan: is the threat exaggerated?

As Pakistani forces fight militants in an area close to Swat, there are two contrasting images of a state in upheaval.

One is a nuclear-armed country in great peril, in danger of being overrun by militants, and in turn a mortal threat to the rest of the world, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton painted it last week.

The other is a nation of more than 160 million people with a burgeoning middle class that all but rejected Islamist parties in the last election, and hit the streets last month forcing the government to respect the independence and integrity of the judiciary. A nation with a professional army that for all the coups it engineered at home has credited itself well in all three wars it fought with much larger neighbour India, a bureaucracy as professional and cast in the same steel frame of the British empire as its counterpart in India, and a free and aggressive press.

Pakistan Army says militants will not be allowed to dictate terms

Is the Pakistan army getting ready to act against the Taliban militants who have made the deepest advance yet into the country, seizing control of Buner district, 100 km (60 miles) from Islamabad, after taking over Swat region?

The militants began withdrawing on Friday just as quietly as they moved into the district, and it wasn’t clear what had led to the sudden withdrawal.

It came just as Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Kayani issued a statement saying the army “will not allow the militants to dictate terms to the government or impose their way of life on the civil society of Pakistan.”

It must be one of the strongest statements yet from the army chief since the government made a peace deal with the Islamists in the Swat valley and comes on top of some rather menacing  noises from Washington.

India launches Israeli-made satellite for eyes in the sky

India launched an Israeli-made spy satellite on Monday that will help it keep a close eye on its borders stretching from Pakistan in the west to China in the north and east.

The launch is significant for several reasons. First off, the all-weather advanced satellite that the Israelis themselves use for surveillance on nations such as Iran is an eye in the sky that Indian security planners have been demanding for long. India has its own sophisticated satellite imaging programme that gives pretty high resolution pictures, but, as a defence scientist once told me, they tended to go a bit blind in bad weather, especially during the monsoon.

The Israeli satellite is supposed to be an all-seeing all-weather platform that at a height of 550 kms lets you see things like a motorbike on the street. New Delhi apparently asked the Israelis to speed up the satellite after the Mumbai attacks in November when gunmen arrived on the shores of the country’s financial capital in boats.

The idea obviously would be to watch the borders, both land and sea on the west. But satellites such as these can also tell you about troop movements. Logically any big movement on the border with China would fall under its footprint.

A letter for Pakistan’s Kayani from an Indian officer

A retired Indian Army officer has written an open letter to Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani that Pakistan’s The News carried this week and which is now popping up on blogs.

Colonel Harish Puri says it is incredible that the Pakistan Army allowed something as reprehensible as the public flogging of a teenage girl in the Swat  Valley without lifting a finger, even though it coudn’t have happened very far from an army checkpoint.

For a force that is as professional as the Pakistan Army and which has fought valiantly in all three wars with India,  and acquitted itself well in  U.N. peacekeeping missions worldwide, such an “abject surrender is unthinkable,” he writes.

Pakistan, India and the election manifestos

The world’s largest democracy chooses a new government in an election beginning on Thursday, and given the fires burning next door in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the men and women who will rule New Delhi over the next five years will doubtless exert influence over the course of events.

Indeed, with the pain and anger over  the Mumbai attacks of November still raw, the mood could hardly be tougher against Pakistan. Even shorn of the campaign rhetoric, the positions of both the ruling Congress and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party on Pakistan begin from common ground. No dialogue with Islamabad until it “dismantles the infrastructure of terrorism”, both parties say in their manifestos.

Full texts of the documents of the two main parties are here and here.

Can Pakistan’s ISI sever ties with Taliban?

The United States has begun demanding rather publicly that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence make a clean break of its ties with the Afghan Taliban to help stabilise the situation in Afghanistan.

But can you force a country to act against its self-interest, despite all all your leverage, asks Robert D. Kaplan  in a piece for the Atlantic. And does it make sense for an intelligence agency to break off all contact with arguably the biggest player in the region?

Since President Barack Obama placed Pakistan at the centre of his strategy to fight the Afghan war, the debate over the ISI has gotten more open and more heated. Some Pakistani officials and experts with links to the establishment have taken exception to the United States openly painting the spy agency in enemy colours, accusing elements within it of supporting the Talibam.

Can Afghanistan’s cricket heroes fight back?

With three defeats in a row, Afghanistan’s cricket team are fighting with their backs to the wall in their quest for a place in next year’s World Cup, the highest level of the game.

Up until now theirs has been an inspired performance, jumping from the fifth division of world cricket to one level below the major test-playing countries in less than a year.  Now in South Africa for the World Cup qualifiers they are bidding for a place at the top table of cricket and after a dream run are struggling.

They lost their latest game against the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday.

Can they find in themselves, in their tough beginnings as cricketers, the power to fight back? This team is nothing if not gritty and determined.  Read this piece in cricinfo about a team unlike any other ever in the history of the game. Many of its members grew up in the refugee camps of northwest Pakistan where their families fled during the wars in Afghanistan.