Pakistan army today is faced with multidimensional challenges. None is more important than the need to understand that it must create an enabling environment to combat growing militancy in FATA (AfPak region). The state of the country’s economy suggests that it should cut down the size of the active duty force. Cut down on the strength of soldiers as well as the units that employs them. But the generals as well as the politicians know well that the army cannot be asked both ‘to ensure operational effectiveness and cut down on the resources and save money as well’. What then is the way forward? Can we bend the arc of cost by altering the strategy to combat militancy? Can this be done without negatively affecting the capability and the capacity of the army to perform its assigned roles? We cannot cut down the size of the army as it remains critical in maintaining national stability but we can surely ‘lower the cost’ by cutting down on army’s operational costs.
US spent nine years, $700 billion and suffered over 4000 American causalities to culminate the war it started in Iraq. Compare this with five months, $ one billion and no causalities to topple the Libyan regime through covert operations and NATO strikes. Quite strikingly the methods employed and the manners in which both wars have been fought are remarkably different yet with the same results.
Pakistan army’s units deploy and re-deploy in the formations on the western front. The ‘rotation policy’ for the units on the western front is a critical guarantor that combats war fatigue but the ‘rotational presence’ is high on cost. The units come and go in the combat zone (FATA) while those whom they fight have a permanent presence in the land. Resultantly tactical operational failures that are seen as signs of ‘incompetence’ often are a product of non familiarization with the terrain as well as unfamiliarity and inexperience of fighting the irregular warfare there.
The US troops draw down that starts this year will eventually be completed in 2014. By that time we must plan to secure the ‘open, provocative and destabilizing AfPak border’ on the same lines as Indians have done in Kashmir. In the long run this will help the army to broaden its scope of not only efficiently and effectively countering the militant threat in the area but substantially combating the growing insurgency in the province of Balochistan. It will also reduce deployment of regular troops on western borders thus cutting on cost on long term and permanent basis. Strategically it will deliver a clear message that our priority is to ‘ensure that after the US troops are gone no cross border movement takes place and Afghanistan gets to deal with its internal problems all by itself and on its own’. The project is extremely expensive yet considering its long term benefits it is necessary and unavoidable.
Advanced technology and information revolution has altered the battlefield. Controlled border crossing will prevent conflict in FATA and also create enabling security environment all along AfPak border. Without a secure border on our western front peace will remain elusive and we will continue to spend and pay for army’s operational costs in a war that it is unlikely to win.
MUHAMMAD ALI EHSAN
Karachi
