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| Are we ready for the long war? |
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Monday, November 09, 2009
This is in connection with “Are we ready for the long war?” by Shafqat Mahmood (Nov 6). Thank you, Mr Mehmood, for acknowledging military wisdom and the deliberate approach of General Kayani to handle the insurgency. For a military commander, conception of a military operation is a very serious business as it not only affects the security of the country but also puts at risk lives of so many and so well-trained soldiers — Kargil being the classic example of military incompetence and ambitions of Pervez Musharraf. Army operations in South Waziristan have made good progress and the casualty rate is also low for which General Kayani and his team deserve a national appreciation.
But the real test has yet to come and it will be once the militants will unfold their reactions. In this opening phase, army has approached militants in a conventional way as it was necessary to evict the insurgents from their strongholds to establish the writ of the government and also to give confidence to locals that the government has the ability to protect them. The opposing side seems to be well-educated and trained in insurgency and it is reflected in their strategy of avoiding conventional and pitched battles which are a sure recipe for their defeat. What we need to understand is that the enemy has yet to react and still possesses the capability to strike at will and at a place of their own choosing. They also retain the capability to conduct terrorist acts in the major urban centres of the country. War may be swift from the conventional perspective but the enemy will opt for a long war and therefore we really need to establish if we are ready for it.
From the military perspective, the militants will reorganise and spread insurgency all over FATA and thereby extending the army and causing its further dispersion. After shaping the environment they will resort to insurgency tactics by attacking military posts and disrupting the movement. In that phase, which is likely to be long and difficult to control, the conventional approach of the army will cause setbacks and inflict casualties. The army, therefore, will have to transform it from all dimensions, including deployment, mobility, conception of operations, weapons, communication and training. The success will depend more on individual competence and equipment of an infantry soldier and small group performance. The recent movement and conduct of operations in South Waziristan do not bespeak well of the army’s ability to face a prolonged insurgency. The military needs to recapture lessons from the East Pakistan insurgency experience and the initial US offensive in Afghanistan and the subsequent unfolding of Taliban reactions.
The main issue is our overall strategy to fight this war whose realistic formulation and honest execution will shorten it, ensuring our success. For this there are certain pre-requisites to consider: one, the war is against a perverted mindset which needs to be addressed; two, the insurgency has an intimate linkage with Afghanistan and both countries are inter-dependent; three, there are other regional countries having a stake in this whole issue thus necessitating some common understanding; four, there is a strong anti-operation lobby in the country — how to take it and the nation into confidence about the necessity and morality of the deployment of the army is of utmost importance; and five, how to deny insurgents further recruits both in FATA as well from all over the country. The punch line of our approach, therefore, must be to cap insurgency at its present level and eliminate the root cause with special coordination with the Afghanistan government.
This is more of a political and diplomatic war and military has a well-defined role, but to win it we need a grand political strategy and in this context, there are indications that we are not very well ready for a long war.
Brig Asif Alvi
Karachi
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ISSN 1563-9479 
