Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ
As the protest marchers led by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan's PTI and powerful cleric Tahir ul Qadri's PAT enter Islamabad, the political crisis in Pakistan appears to be escalating amid serious attempts to defuse it. There has been some progress in averting street violence on the streets of the nation's capital but the outcome remains far from certain.
Pakistan Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif
If Pakistan's history is any guide, the nation's military will most likely be the final arbiter in the event that the crisis continues for an extended period of time. The Atlantic Council's Shuja Nawaz is a younger brother of Pakistan's former Army Chief late General Asif Nawaz Janjua. He continues to have close ties with top military brass in Pakistan. He personally knows Pakistan's current Army Chief General Raheel Sharif and some of the corps commanders. Nawaz says the Pakistani military always has contingency plans to deal with all possible crises, including political unrest, that could threaten national security. Such plans are triggered into action by a series of events included in them. In the current crisis, there is a range of possible military responses. Military intervention could be soft as seen in Kakar model or the Kiyani model. The Kakar model is named after General Abdul Waheed Kakar who forced the quarreling President and Prime Minister in 1990s to resign and hold fresh elections under a caretaker arrangement. The Kayani model refers to the phone call by Gen Kayani in 2009 to stop PMLN's march by assuring them the former Chief Justice Mr. Iftikhar Chaudhry will be restored to his post by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. A soft intervention is much more likely given the military's current focus on Operation ZarbeArb in FATA to rid Pakistan of the Taliban and other terrorists who have claimed the lives of over 50,000 Pakistanis in recent years. In the unlikely event that soft intervention fails, the military could be forced into directly taking power for a period of time to bring back some semblance of order. Will escalating political crisis draw Pakistan Military into the fray? How will Gen Raheel Sharif and his corp commanders handle the situation if the politicians fail to resolve the crisis? Mr. Shuja Nawaz, Pakistan's top expert and author of books on civil-military ties, joins ViewPoint from Overseashost Faraz Darvesh and panelists Misbah Azam (politicsinpakistan.com) and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)
Here's a video discussion on the subject of possible military intervention in Pakistan: https://vimeo.com/103522159
Even as US-Pakistan relations are sinking to new lows, there are tentative signs that Pakistan's fight against Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is beginning to succeed. Here are some of the facts that reinforce this assessment:
1. There have been no major terrorist attacks in Pakistan since the the Mehran Naval Base siege in Karachi in May, 2011.
2. Some 1,022 civilians have died in bomb attacks in 2011 so far, according to a report in Christian Science Monitor. Barring a late-year surge, this represents the lowest figure in four years, according to monitoring conducted by the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal. This is significantly lower than 1,547 in 2010, and 1,688 in 2009.
3. The TTP has been battered by Pakistani military operations and U.S. drone strikes. It is splintered into more than 100 smaller factions, significantly weakened and running short of cash, according to security officials, analysts and tribesmen from the insurgent who spoke to the reporters of the Associated Press (AP).
In addition to the divide and conquer policy of the Pakistan Army against the Taliban in FATA, at least part of the double digit drop in terror casualties for two years in a row is attributed to improvements in policing, including removal of soft targets, said Rifaat Hussain, a security analyst at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad who spoke with The Christian Science Monitor: "They [now] have genuine difficulty carrying out spectacular attacks."
The anti-terror police are now equipped with heavy weaponry including mortars, grenade launchers. Some 2,000 policemen are now deployed at more than 42 checkpoints on the outskirts of Peshawar, says Mr. Toru, the former inspector general, and arming citizens to create a community police force that can act as authorities' eyes and ears.
The police are using the help of experts like Fulbright scholar and computer expert Zeeshan Usmani who has developed software models and simulation techniques to analyze and investigate terrorist bombings. Emergency medical response is also improving with knowledge and experience gained by ambulance service operators like Edhi Foundation and various hospital emergency rooms in major cities. An example is a Yale trained Emergency Medicine specialist Dr. Junaid Razzak who has set up an Emergency Medicine program in Karachi to train physicians in handling accident and terror victim injuries.
Though Pakistanis have been paying a very heavy price in terms of mass casualties, it now appears that they have learned to deal with the menace more effectively, and have finally begun to turn the tide against the TTP insurgency in Pakistan. It won't be easy to end it, but there is light now visible at the end of of the long dark tunnel.
Life of a Siachen Soldier, a documentary produced by Pakistan Army, has won the top prize at the International Film Festival "Eserciti-e-popoli" (armies and people) recently held in Rome, Italy, according to Inter Services Public Relations(ISPR) directorate. Armed Forces representatives from 21 countries, including Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States, participated in the contest where 150 documentaries were screened in different categories. This year, Pakistan Army’s documentary won the first prize in the category of training and was awarded Chief of Army Staff trophy.
Produced by Brigadier Syed Azmat Ali and directed by Col Syed Mujtaba Tirmizi, the movie focuses on the training and deployment of Pakistan Army soldiers on Siachin glacier. Last Year ISPR won two awards in this competition.
Documentary is about life on Siachin Glacier, also known as the third Pole for the largest mass of ice outside of the North and South Poles. Siachin is among he most beautiful, enigmatic and spell-binding places on earth. It lies at more than 5,500m above sea level in the disputed region of Kashmir. This frozen stagnant Landscape is nothing short of Divine Art.
The tranquility of this beautiful place was disturbed in 1984 by an Indian incursion, transforming it into the highest battle field on earth. This war was unlike any other. The soldiers had to fight two enemies: the opposing Indian soldiers and the hostile weather. More soldiers on both sides have died from the extreme cold than from enemy fire. In spite of repeated discussions, the two sides have failed to overcome their differences on pulling back troops from the world's highest battlefield.
Pakistan wants both sides to pull back to the positions they held more than 20 years ago before India occupied most of the ice field.
India agrees but says the withdrawal should be preceded by marking the current position of the two forces.
Lack of agreement has produced a high-altitude standoff that forces year-round deployment of soldiers by both sides. The back-channel diplomacy is currently focusing on a solution that includes demilitarization of the entire region of Kashmir, including Siachen.
Meanwhile, the Siachen glacier is melting at an unprecedented rate, partly due to global warming, but mainly because of the permanent troops deployments. The glacial ice has been cut and melted; cutting and melting of glacial ice through the application of chemicals have made it the fastest melting glacier in the Himalayas. The situation is further exacerbated by dumping of chemicals, metals, organic and human waste and leaks from 2000 gallons of kerosene oil from 250 km plastic pipeline laid by India on the glacier.
The beautiful Siachen is likely to turn into an environmental disaster unless both India and Pakistan agree to vacate it in the best interest of their people. The rapid disappearance of this glacier will further aggravate the water crisis the two nations are facing.
Here is a video clip of the documentary about Siachen:
“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:
