Assessing Pakistan Army's Capabilities

Guest Post by Ahmad Faruqui.

“The (Pakistan) army had to retrain almost from scratch to meet the new challenge and it has done remarkably well in completely altering the training priority and emphasis in such a short period.”

Col. Brian Cloughley, author of “A History of the Pakistan Army”, talking about Pakistan Army's Counterinsurgency capability.


The Pakistani army’s war against the Taliban continues to make headlines. But there are several other reasons for the global interest in that institution.

The Pakistani army is one of the world’s largest and it is armed with nuclear weapons. It has fought three major wars with India and a few minor ones. Courtesy of four coups, it has ruled the country for more than half its history. And it maintains a sizable presence in the economy.

Brian Cloughley’s “History of the Pakistan Army” has just gone into its third edition and that makes him eminently qualified to rate the army’s combat effectiveness. He is a Briton who served as a colonel in the Australian army.

In Brian’s view, “The army is combat effective, with the caveat that there is always room for improvement. One problem is that large-scale exercises are extremely expensive. Given the fuel consumption of armored units, for example, the bill for a division-sized exercise becomes astronomical, and Pakistan can’t afford it. So, although the army is very good, it is suffering from lack of large-scale training.”

Of course, this lack of training could hide major weaknesses such as the ones the army has manifested in prior wars. For example, poor coordination of armor and infantry units blunted Pakistan’s counter-attack in the Kasur-Khem Karan sector in 1965 forcing Pakistan to the cease-fire table faster than anyone would have expected. But Brian felt such blunders were unlikely to be repeated.

I asked him whether the army had improved in the past decade. Brian said the army had been improving since General Aslam Beg’s tenure as army chief who “encouraged wider thinking about tactics.” In particular, a much better logistics chain was established and “contributed immensely to the army’s war-fighting capabilities.”

I asked him whether the army had learned much from the 1971 war. Given the one-sided nature of that war, Brian said the war yielded “little of tactical importance.” But a strategic lesson was learned, that “there is no point in going to war unless you are absolutely certain you have the capability to win.”

I asked him if there was a spirit of critical inquiry in today’s army. He said there were some very critical minds in the army and that some of the Corps Commanders’ meetings had been very argumentative. He pointed out those generals could speak up without risking their careers since only one or two were going to get the fourth star.

He said that training at the two-star level and above was “very good” but added that there was no way of knowing how today’s generals will perform in future wars. He also expressed a concern about “the standard of junior officers themselves. They are promoted too quickly and don’t serve with soldiers for long enough as lieutenants.”

I asked him about the army’s equipment. He said, “You will never get a soldier admitting that there are no equipment problems – probably because there are always some sort of problems, but from boots to tanks, things work, and that’s what matters.”

He added that in the past a major problem was that most of the critical, high powered equipment was imported. Now, about a third of the tanks were produced indigenously and the US M-113 armored personnel carriers had been modified and were being built from scratch. The army is almost self-sufficient in ammunition and aerial bombs. But all of the artillery continues to be imported.

I asked what threats preoccupy the army. He said terrorism and anarchy in the tribal areas: “The army had to retrain almost from scratch to meet the new challenge and it has done remarkably well in completely altering the training priority and emphasis in such a short period.”

Of course, the army contends that it continues to face a major threat along the Indian border and finding a “balance between commitment to NWFP/FATA and maintaining a credible deterrent in the east is difficult.” India continues to voice threats that any act of terror that originates from Pakistan will be followed by a short intense war.

However, Brian is convinced that “nobody could say that such a war would be short. It would almost certainly go nuclear very quickly.” To me, that raises the issue of why Pakistan needs to have such a large army now that it has gone overtly nuclear.

I asked if the army had concluded that national governance was not in its best interest since it detracted from its primary function. He said yes but qualified it by saying that if the army senses that the country is faced with a total breakdown, it may step in.

The problem, in my opinion, is that has always used this excuse to seize power in the past. One can only hope that if the army steps in for a fifth time, it will break from past practice and only stay in power long enough to hold elections and transfer power to the elected representatives.

I asked Brian if the army was able to carry out joint operations with the air force and the navy. He said joint-ness continued to be an area that needed improvement even though PAF-army cooperation had improved markedly in the recent war against the Taliban.

Brian added that true joint-ness would only arise when Pakistan appoints a Chief of Defense Force (as is the case in the UK) but conceded that he did not see that happening any time soon.

When asked to compare the Pakistani and Indian armies, he said the two were very similar with Pakistan having “an edge in quality of armor. This might appear strange, but is caused by India’s obsession with the ‘indigenous’ (foreign-engined) tank, the Arjun, which is a disaster.” He added, in so far as training and general professionalism were concerned, “I would be happy to serve in either army. You can’t get a greater compliment than that.”

Finally, I asked him to name the main weakness of the army. He said, “The army suffers from a shortage of junior officers, and especially from a dearth of high quality junior officers. This is going to have a debilitating effect as time goes on. The obvious answer is to make the career more attractive – that is, better pay. But it is impossible for the public sector to pay comparable salaries to those offered to graduates by commercial enterprises.”

Over all, the army got really good marks from Brian. Perhaps it has learned its lessons.

- AhmadFaruqui@gmail.com

Here's a video report about Pakistan's weapons development:



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Is Pakistani Economy Poised to Rebound?

Amidst major counterinsurgency operations in and around Swat Valley and growing refugee crisis, there are signs of optimism by investors and bond holders in Pakistan's economy. The KSE-100, Karachi's stock index, is up 27 percent this year, compared with a 12 percent gain in MSCI’s emerging-market stock index of 26 emerging economies, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuela. The Pakistani rupee, which declined 22 percent against the dollar last year, the second-worst performer in Asia, fell 1.8 percent this year.

Pakistan’s 6.875 percent dollar bond maturing in June 2017 yielded 18.62 percent last month, versus a record high of 26.30 percent on Nov. 3, 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The price has climbed to 52 cents on the dollar, from as low as 35 cents last year. “Broadly, we believe that it definitely doesn’t look as bleak for Pakistan,” said Joel Kim, who helps oversee $433 billion globally as head of Asian debt at ING Investment Management in Hong Kong. “They’ve passed the worst point. The IMF money has helped stabilize things.” But Pakistan's bond risk still remains high: Five- year credit default swaps based on Pakistan’s bonds show investors need to pay $2.2 million annually to protect $10 million of Pakistan’s debt for five years, the third-highest in the world, according to CMA Datavision. As recently as June of last year, Pakistan sovereign debt credit default swaps (CDS) traded at 530 basis points in Hong Kong, meaning it cost $530,000 a year to protect $10 million of Pakistan's debt from default for five years.

Terrorism has cost Pakistan $35 billion in economic losses and damage to infrastructure, according to a statement given to reporters by President Asif Ali Zardari’s aide on April 17. More than 3,500 terrorist incidents have occurred since 2007, killing an average of 84 people per month this year, the aide said.

In addition to the $7.6 billion loan from IMF, Pakistan has been promised $5.3 billion in aid by more than 20 countries to help shore up its economy and combat al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. While the political risk in the country remains high, the flow of loans and aid is helping shore up the nation's economy. Pakistani business officials say the perception of political risk is overstated and international investors are starting to return.

Strong growth and job creation in both India and Pakistan over the last five years were fueled in large part by huge inflow of cash and investment. Investment accounted for about 39 percent of India's gross domestic product in fiscal year 2008, up from 25 percent five years ago. At its peak, more than a third of investment came from abroad, according to Credit Suisse. But in the last three months of last year, foreign loans and direct investment in India fell by nearly a third, to their lowest level in more than two years, according to a report in New York Times. Foreign direct investment in Pakistan fell to $5.19 billion in the year ending June 30, 2008, from a record $8.43 billion a year earlier, government data show.

“There is now very early signs of portfolio investment starting to come back,” Asad Umar, the president of Karachi- based Engro Chemical Pakistan Ltd., told Bloomberg TV in a recent interview in New York. “Pakistan is going to come out of it earlier than the rest of the globe.”

Pakistan’s trade deficit narrowed by almost 50% in March, as imports declined faster than exports. In the same month, worker remittances were a record high at US$743 million an increase of 23% over last year. While Japan’s exports plummeted by 50%, China’s by 26% and India’s by 33%, Pakistan’s exports were down by 25%. Even though, the competitive peer group is formidable, Pakistan is the best performer.

On the corporate profitability front, during the worst global down turn in a century, Pakistan’s corporate profitability of listed companies declined by a mere 3% in aggregate in the 3rd quarter of 2009.

At the end of calender year 2008, remittances topped 7 billion dollars, an increase of 17 per cent year over year, led by higher remittances from oil-rich GCC countries, which grew by 30 per cent year on year. Similarly, FDI inflows jumped 100 per cent year on year to 708 million dollars in December, 2008, as the telecom, oil and gas, and financial-services sectors continued to attract foreign inventors, according a report in the Nation newspaper.

The IMF forecasts the economy will expand 2.5 percent in the 12 months ending June 30, the slowest pace in eight years, after growing at an average annual pace of 6.8 percent since 2002. The State Bank of Pakistan forecast in April that economic growth for the year through June will slump to between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent, far below the 5.5 percent the government has projected -- and too slow to create the 2.5m jobs a year for its fast-growing population of about 170 million people. During 2002 to 2007, Pakistan's economy grew at an average rate of 7% annually, creating about 2.5m jobs a year, barely keeping up with the number of young people ready to join the work force each year, according to Salman Shah, senior economic adviser to former President Musharraf of Pakistan. However, the current economic slowdown has resulted in significant job losses in almost all private sectors of the economy, increasing visible signs of poverty. According to a BBC report last year, three times a day, hundreds of men, women and children line up outside dozens of Karachi restaurants for meals which are paid for by philanthropists and charity donors. These lines were considerably shorter, or non-existent until early 2008. Many of those lining up are industrial workers who have lost their jobs.

Pakistan's future, as India's, lies in the nation's ability to move workers from farms to manufacturing and in engaging more with the world rather than retreating from it. Pakistan, like India, also is relatively light on exports as a part of the overall economy. In Pakistan, exports account for less than 15% of gross domestic product, according to Shah, compared with about 25% in India and 40% in China. While India's economy must create 11-12 million new million jobs a year, Pakistan's economy needs to add 2.5-3 million jobs annually to employ all the young people entering the job market each year.

Ms. Ann Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan, believes that ultimately the security will depend on economic growth in Pakistan. She is working on a U.S.-sponsored investment-aid-trade based economic revival that would help offset the resentment created by America's "12- year divorce" from the region after the first Afghan War. "We're trying to get people to see that we're committed by helping with investment, Patterson told Forbes magazine, "because you meet older people and they will say to you, "Oh, I remember dam such-and-such, and the Americans built that." That's the kind of synergy we look for, because it builds goodwill for both of us."

Regardless of the foreign assistance to deal with the current crisis, I think all Pakistanis must demonstrate their care and concern by donating and volunteering to help the refugees. The key for Pakistani military's success in defeating the Taliban is in how well Pakistani government can maintain public support for the military action.

Pakistani military's robust response to the rising militancy appears to be backed by a significant majority of the people. If the Pakistani political leadership can deal with its fall-out, such as the refugee crisis, and sustain the popular support for the ongoing military action, and the government executes a rational set of economic policies, it is quite reasonable to expect an economic rebound within a year. Given strong underlying growth dynamics in South Asia, the negative feedback effects of the global financial crisis should be temporary as well. A relatively rapid rebound can be expected in 2010, with a projected revival of GDP growth to 7 per cent, spurring job growth again.

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Why is America Losing in Afghanistan?

American counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan has come under a lot of criticism recently as the resurgent Taliban have made significant gains. Not only are the Taliban controlling over 70% of the territory in Afghanistan, but they have also recently demonstrated their ability to strike at will in the heart of Kabul, the heavily fortified capital of the nation comparable to the Green Zone in Baghdad.

The latest reports indicate that there is a lot to worry about not just the failing strategy, but how badly the war is being executed on the ground. A lot of civilian casualties and lack of security have turned the population against the US forces. And now, according to the Batimore Sun, the Pentagon has reportedly lost track of some 87,000 weapons handed out without proper accounting to Afghan army and police units.

The weapons included rifles, pistols, machine guns, grenade launchers, shotguns, mortars and other weapons, the Government Accountability Office said. The GAO is the investigations arm of Congress.

The weapons are among about 240,000 small arms and other sensitive items, including 2,410 highly prized night vision devices that were given to Afghan security forces being trained by the U.S. military. The shipments included about 79,000 AK-47 assault rifles, the standard weapon used by the Taliban and other insurgents.

The U.S. command also failed to keep serial numbers or other records on about 135,000 weapons donated by allies and handed over to Afghan security forces, the GAO said.

Some of the lost or stolen US military equipment is starting to turn up for sale in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, according to Shahan Mufti of GlobalPost. Mufti describes Peshawar as a Silk Road town near the Afghan border where the black market has thrived and the military spoils of empires hawked openly throughout history.

Mufti recently purchased a U.S. military laptop for $650 from a small shop, which is known as the “Sitara Market,” on the western edge of the sprawling open-air markets on the edge of Peshawar.

The laptop, which Mufti says has clear U.S. military markings and serial numbers, contained restricted U.S. military information, as well as software for military platforms, the identities of numerous military personnel and information about weaknesses and flaws in American military vehicles being employed in the war in Afghanistan.

The leaks of the U.S. military’s electronic information on hard disks has occurred in the past. In April, 2006, the Los Angeles Times uncovered the story of confidential military information being smuggled off Bagram air base in Afghanistan on miniature hard drives and sold in markets no more than two hundred yards away.

Instead of accepting responsibility for bad US strategy and continual bungling, the response by the American military in Afghanistan is to shift the entire blame for their failures on Afghan leaders or Pakistani military. President Obama has spoken with over a dozen world leaders since taking office, and he finally called and spoke with Pakistan's President Zardari yesterday. While he continues to say Afghanistan is his top priority, the new president has yet to speak directly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. He has delegated that job to Richard Holbrooke, who is not even a member of his cabinet.

It is clear from the developments over the last several months that the US needs a complete overhaul of both its overall strategy and tactics. Just the planned troops surge alone will not suffice. There has to be a comprehensive new strategy for political dialog, reconstruction and smart counterinsurgency tactics in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Related Links:

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Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan

John A. Nagl wrote the counterinsurgency field manual used by General David Petraeus in Iraq in during 2008. Though the jury is still out on the long-term prospects of peace and stability in Iraq, so far the Nagl strategy appears to be succeeding as demonstrated by last week's peaceful elections that went quite smoothly with a fairly good turn-out in most Iraqi provinces. In a piece he has co-written with Nathaniel C. Fick for Foreign Policy magazine, Nagl offers his thoughts to General Patraeus on how to fight the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Flick and Nagl argue that the American strategy in Afghanistan must deal with the following five paradoxes:

Paradox 1: Some of the best weapons do not shoot.

Paradox 2: Sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.

Paradox 3: The hosts doing something tolerably is often better than foreigners doing it well.

Paradox 4: Sometimes the more force is used, the less effective it is.

Paradox 5: Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction.

The fifth paradox in particular talks about Pakistan in the context of the US strategy in Afghanistan.

The authors oppose the current US raids into Pakistan in pursuit of insurgents. They say, "Cross-border raids into Pakistan to pursue insurgents have strained U.S. relations with Pakistan at this critical juncture in the Afghan campaign. Pakistan is, of course, inextricably connected to the Afghan insurgency. The Pashtun belt, as the border area between the two countries is known, constitutes the real battleground in this war. Counterinsurgency operations in Pakistan, therefore, are a necessary component of any strategy in Afghanistan. Without Pakistani support, however, unilateral cross-border raids will create more blowback than they are worth".

The authors argue that "a better strategy for persuading Pakistan to act as an ally—and not a spoiler—in Afghanistan involves giving up the short-term tactical gains of such raids in favor of the regional diplomacy necessary to broaden and deepen the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Even after Islamist extremists bombed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September in an attempt to assassinate the new civilian leadership of Pakistan, the Pakistani Army remains more focused on the perceived threat from India than on the actual threat from inside its own country’s borders. U.S. and international efforts to broker confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan (translation: resolve Kashmir) are likely to have a far greater impact on Pakistani counterinsurgency efforts than any number of unilateral U.S. raids".

The authors agree that more U.S. troops are absolutely necessary to turn the tide in Afghanistan, but American troops are a short-term answer to a lasting set of problems. Supporting Afghan and Pakistani governments that can meet the needs of their own people—including security—must be the long-term solution. The paradoxes of counterinsurgency detailed here, counterintuitive though they may be, provide the best guideposts on the rocky trail toward success. It will not be the death or capture of every last enemy fighter that wins this war, but creating a position of strength from which to negotiate a lasting political solution to a cycle of conflict with no other end in sight.

To read the full text of the article by Fick and Nagl, please visit Foreign Policy magazine website.

The ideas offered by Flick and Nagl appear to be a break from the US strategy pursued by the Bush administration and so far continuing under the new Obama administration. However, it's not clear if the time for such ideas to be effective has already passed. "Of all the lands of the earth, Afghanistan has been among the least hospitable to foreigners who come to rule, or to teach them how they should rule themselves", wrote Patrick Buchanan in his opinion on Creators.com.

As the conservative American columnist further wrote: "America and NATO have never been nearer to strategic defeat". In this latest assessment, Buchanan joined Brig Mark Carleton-Smith, the UK's commander in Afghanistan's Helmand province in Afghanistan who declared in October that the Afghan war can not be won. "We're not going to win this war", he told London's Sunday Times in October.

"It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army." he added. Later, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has retained his job in the Obama administration, basically agreed with the British brigadier's assessment without admitting that "the war can not be won". Instead, Gates said, "despite challenges, there was no reason to think success could not be achieved in the long run".

Before arriving in Kandahar recently, Gates spoke grimly of a "sustained commitment for some protracted period of time. How many years that is, and how many troops that is ... nobody knows."

While the US and NATO forces struggle in Afghanistan, their growing frustration is finding an outlet in frequent US strikes inside Pakistani territory further fueling Pakistan's anti-American public opinion. With the country's ongoing crises, and the growing US demands on Pakistan, the future of US-Pakistan relations and the chances of success in Afghanistan do not look particularly bright. The solution to this darkening mood in both nations is a serious and sincere effort by each to improve their bilateral relationship based on a recognition of mutual interests and genuine needs, as recommended by Nagl and Flick. The Obama administration has an opportunity to change the US tone with Pakistan to make the friendship genuine and useful to both partners in the war on terror. Barack Obama's oft-repeated position that Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations can not be isolated from the "war on terror" in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in the world offers a good starting point for discussion.

The sooner the Obama administration and the US allies accept the futility of a military solution in Afghanistan, the easier and less costly it will be in terms of loss of life for all parties involved. Rather than desperately widening the Afghan war into a dangerous regional conflict, a comprehensive political solution with a timetable for withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan seems the only way to bring this long, deadly war to an end.

Polls show very strong support for removing all US military forces from the region. In a 2007 WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO) poll, conducted in conjunction with the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism (START) Center at the University of Maryland, large majorities supported the goal of getting "the US to remove its bases and its military forces from all Islamic countries" in Morocco (72 percent), Egypt (92 percent), and Pakistan (71 percent). Winding down the twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will go a long way toward restoring a positive US image in the world, particularly the Islamic countries.

Let's hope Obama, Gates and Petraeus are persuaded by the sound advice offered by Fick and Nagl to try and find a way out of Afghanistan at some point in not too distant a future.

Here's a video clip of Fick and Nagl talking about Patraeus:



Related Links:

Rand Report: US Strategy in Muslim World Counterproductive

Nagl Talks With NPR Radio

Obama's Kashmir Focus

Can Obama Win the Afghan War?

Can India "Do a Lebanon" in Pakistan?