Pakistani internal security (catch all)

[Piranha]

Reading:

Pakistan Makes a Taliban Truce, Creating a Haven

The government announced Monday that it would accept a system of Islamic law in the Swat valley and agreed to a truce, effectively conceding the area as a Taliban sanctuary and suspending a faltering effort by the army to crush the insurgents.
The concessions to the militants, who now control about 70 percent of the region just 100 miles from the capital, were criticized by Pakistani analysts as a capitulation by a government desperate to stop Taliban abuses and a military embarrassed at losing ground after more than a year of intermittent fighting. About 3,000 Taliban militants have kept 12,000 government troops at bay and terrorized the local population with floggings and the burning of schools.
The accord came less than a week before the first official visit to Washington of the Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to meet Obama administration officials and discuss how Pakistan could improve its tactics against what the American military is now calling an industrial-strength insurgency there of Al Qaeda and the Taliban militants.

Jane Perlez, New York Times

I really get nightmares about what this will mean, let's say to the women in this area.
Perhaps I'm taking this too personally, and should all this 'be looked upon in another way'. I really do want to look at this kind of news in a more reasonable way, so here's an open invitation to share your responses ...

[George L. Singleton]

Greetings and will attempt to offer one old trooper's views to answer some of your open ended question(s):

1. Recent successful drone attacks in other Northern Pakistan provinces and areas have been working and the Taliban wanted a safe have that does not have a common border with Afghanistan. SWAT meets their needs now and they have just managed to combine murder, threat of murder, suicide bombings, and having too many friends in high places in the Pakistani ISI (read that as Intelligence Service) and the upper ranks of the Pakistan Army..who have long been pro-Taliban and pro-al Qaida.

2. Your fears are well founded as this largely pits the Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army against both the new President and new Prime Minister of Pakistan.

3. Now both the Taliban and al Qaida, for the moment at least, feel they are in a safer site, area is about the size of the US State of Delaware, have driven killed and/or driven out about 1/3 of the native Pukhtuns...the invading Taliban are of other subtribes and not native to Swat, and are deeply feared and resented by the differing Pukhtun subtrives inside and native to SWAT.

4. This in league with the terrorists action by the Pak government and Army, largely the Army is pulling these strings of surrender, invites more such capitulations and surrenders to the core of all this religious terrorism, Sharia Law, in other Northern parts of Pakistan.

5. Especially upsetting to me, since I served in the Peshawar and Karachi areas many years ago in our military, is that the capital of all of Pakistan, Islamabad, is not that many miles S-SW of SWAT and is full of radical madrassas itself, in fact, the Red Madrassah had a week long fire fight between the Pak Army and the Taliban teachers and students there in Islamabad about a year ago...which then President Musharraf put his career as President on the line to try to root them out...via the weeklong gunfight.

Your fears are well founded.

ASIDE: My wife and I met some very fine Dutch Special Forces while everyone was touring the Amiercan Cemetery at Normandy, France, summer, 2006. These Dutch were your special forces headed from that military leave weekend straight into Afghanistan. I and we over here appreciate our alliance and long term friendship with the government and all the people of Holland. Thank you to you and to all your countrymen. Colonel George L. Singleton, USAF, Ret.

[J Wolfsberger]

Perhaps because I listen to Radio Netherlands over WRN, I've long been aware of the heroic efforts of the Dutch in Afghanistan. I'm deeply embarrassed at the disparagement of their efforts (as well as the efforts of Canada and Australia) in certain segments of US society. Very few people in the US are aware that, proportionate to the population, the Dutch have suffered as significant a number of casualties as we have.

[Bob's World]

We're getting several threads all going on this same topic, so I will just repost here an alternative viewpoint:

This is complicated, so the one caution that I would throw out to all is to neither assess this as a "loss" for the Government of Pakistan, nor as a "victory" for the Taliban. Both of those entities are made up of segments of the populace of Pakistan, which so far as been the big loser in this competition for their support.

I think the last two paragraphs are the most telling:

“The hardest task for the government will be to protect the Punjab against inroads by militants,” wrote I. A. Rehman, a member of the Human Rights Commission, in the daily newspaper, Dawn.

“Already, religious extremists have strong bases across the province and sympathizers in all arenas: political parties, services, the judiciary, the middle class, and even the media,” he wrote. “For its part, the government is handicapped because of its failure to offer good governance, guarantee livelihoods, and restore people’s faith in the frayed judicial system.”


The fact is, that there is only insurgency in Pakistan of this strength due to the enduring failure of the government of Pakistan to provide good governance (how the governance is perceived by the populace, not how effective it is assessed to be by itself or outsiders). I also contend that a government can not appease its own populace, that appeasement is when one makes concessions to an outside government at the expense of their own populace.

The real issue is how the Pakis follow up. This should provide some "maneuver space" with the populace that may well allow the government to extend greater security and services into the region. The fact that it is clearly counter to what the U.S. Government would want them to do also lends this move greater credibility with the target populace.

The cries of "Taliban sanctuary" are largely ignorant extremism; because the U.S. has make it very clear that we do not feel constrained in the slightest to conduct strike operations against Taliban and AQ targets in Pakistan. This deal does nothing to change that U.S. perspective.

The U.S. needs to support the Government of Pakistan in this move; helping to ensure that they make the most of the potential opportunities, and not allow this to in fact turn into the bad deal the naysayers are proclaiming it to be from inception.

Personally, and professionally, I am optimistic.
__________________

[George L. Singleton]

Thanks for your input Bob, which I read earlier vs. a posting of mine which DAVIDBFOP "kidnapped" in the wee hours our time, mid-moring London time, today.

My posting, which is fine, is now under David's banner but he gives me credit in the last line of my last paragraph.

David, I hope you appreciate my wry Irish sense of humor. My other ancient clans are English and Welch, so I am only half Irish, but that is enough to make me dangerous you know!

Bob, you may want to review my around 50 published letters in the Karachi DAWN through end of 2008 to see in part where I am coming from regarding Pakistan.

We do disagree as this surrender of SWAT at this time is based on my tracking of this mess ever since 9/11 a huge turning point for the worse. My opinion, but the indiginous folks over there telling me this right and left without me asking what they think. It is in letters daily in the Peshawar FRONTIER POST, which I treat as more relevant to NWFP topics vs. the DAWN, which is more of a Punjabi based English press, FP being Pukhtun family owned and managed. Etc.

Grim news to me and to those over there.

I have numerous e-mails dating back the past 18 months from those inside SWAT begging for US/UN ground forces intervention, which of course I don't favor but where else logically could these oppressed Pukhtuns think to turn, as their doubts of the Pak Army again and again are correct! The Pakistani top Army flag ranks sell out the locals/Pukhtuns over and over.

Does anyone remember the last throws of Musharraf's Presidencey? Treaty or treaties of peace with the Taliban which the Taliban broke within two weeks.

Does anyone remember early actions of the new President and Prime Minister of Pakistan? Treaties again in the frontier areas of Pakistan on the Afghan border which the Taliban again broke within weeks.

To those over there, their views to me, which repeat in summary here, these so called jiirgas and treaties are gifts of time to resupply, reform, and attack across the border into Afghanistan and to continue internal within N. Pakistan attacks against native Pukhtuns there.

This is not what I want to say, it is what thePukhtun and other tribes which are not Puktuns but minority locals are saying to me, over and over, in pretty gorry stories.

[George L. Singleton]

Slain Pak TV reporter had 32 bullet wounds


Thursday, 19 February , 2009, 12:19

Islamabad: Thirty two bullets were pumped into TV reporter Musa Khan Khel in Pakistan's Swat Valley two days after Islamabad allowed the Taliban to impose Shariat (Islamic law) in the area, said Geo News executive editor Hamid Mir, adding a lot of radicals were unhappy with his coverage but "truth has to be reported".

Complete story ate below Internet site of murder of Pakistani local news reporter at site of so-called "Peace March" in Swat yesterday. Some way the Taliban observe "peace" there.

http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/

[Piranha]

Thanks for the well-informed supportive messages, as well as for the compliments to our Special Forces men. Perhaps I shouldn't be having nightmares, being angry is the better response ... 'shoulder-to-shoulder' ...

[George L. Singleton]

It is amazing how different folks have different views on the subject of Swat.

My years (2) serving in Pakistan, with my higher HQ being at Badabar (suburb of Peshawar) found today's Swat under a Raj-era and style prince/family line. They (hte Prince and his then ruling family) worked well with the Pakistani Army, Frontier Corp, and local police to have and enforce the writ of law, the civil code, not the "religious" extremist Sharia Law.

Then came the 1980s and the USSR invasion, which spilled over into Paksitan. But even then Swat was isolated from most of that to the extent that the Austrians in the mid-1990s invested millions to develop ski resorts and slopes upon which to build a tourism industry in Swat.

Then came today's Taliban and al Qaida, looking for a haven (my view) away from the border areas...to start new terrorst training camps and impose their view of Sharia Law on the innocent population...which indigenous Swat folks are of different tribes than the invading Taliban...and who (natives to Swat population) had just voted in 2008 for a more secular local and national style of government by voting in locally an ANP provincial assembly and nationally having voted in the PPP and the new President Asif Ali Zardari.

To have and maintain the writ of civil law you have to have law and order. This historically was achieved by having permanent military garrisons who joined together with local police maintained, actively, every single day, not on again, off again, civil law and order and prevented "honor killings and beheadings."

See the Friday, Feb. 27 letter to editor of the Peshawar FRONTIER POST and then if interested, post what you think of the retired Pakistani Brigadier's views and opinions entitled:

Terms of surrender
Brig (R) Tariq Zubair Toor Lahore tariq.zubairtoor@yahoo.com

http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=le&nid=1109