PAKISTAN is trying to restore the writ of the State in the Swat Valley by going all out to crush the Pakistani Taleban entrenched there. The government must regain control of the restive Pashtun dominated northwest or lose its nominal authority over the area forever. For the Pakistani Taleban, occupation of the Swat Valley would give them access to Afghanistan, thereby linking up the Pashtuns, the biggest ethnic group both in Afghanistan and Pakistan's troubled northwest. Given such high stakes on both sides, it might be a long war, perhaps as long as it took for the Taleban to germinate, grow, fester, and spill over into Pakistan. Since 1947, Pakistan has been looking for geographical strategic depth in Afghanistan, arguing that it should exercise strategic control over Afghanistan which falls within its security perimeters. Hence the Taleban was allegedly created by the Pakistani Army as an instrument to execute this design. Another reason cited for the emergence of the Sunni Taleban was Pakistan's need to strike a power balance in Afghanistan so as to prevent the spread of the Shiites in that country. Analysts substantiate this argument by noting Pakistan's critical role in defusing the tension between the Taleban and Iran in Aug. 1998 when Iranian diplomats were killed in the Mazar-e-Sharif. Whatever the real reason or reasons, Pakistan was the first country to recognize the Taleban government when it took over Kabul in 1996. Now, seven-and-a-half years after the post-9/11 fall of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, the Taleban movement, led by Sufi Muhammed, is central again to Pakistan, this time not as a perceived instrument of strategic depth but as a pronounced threat to its survival. The Mujahideen war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s brought into Pakistan the Kalashnikov and drug culture. The “war on terror” after 9/11 brought the suicide-bomb culture. And now the Swat war. What can it ever bring? Why is it being waged at the risk of causing heavy collateral damage? How can the government and the military deal with public opinion against the killing of Pakistanis by Pakistanis? Against foreign support that is perceived as interference in Pakistan's affairs? Chief military spokesman Major-Gen. Athar Abbas addresses these questions in an interview conducted last week in Rawalpindi.Q: What is the strategy in this war against the Taleban? A: The military is working on the government's 3Ds strategy. The first is ‘dialogue' in order to give the peace process a chance. The militants must realize what the government can accept and what constraints it has. The second D is ‘development' – addressing the people's wants, their grievances, their complaints the problems of the backward areas. In case both the dialogue and the development is not working, then there would be a requirement of ‘deterrence' – the third D. And deterrence will be in the form of security forces operations if need be in the areas. The military, whenever they are asked to aid the government, the civil power, they will go into the area of operations. The government will follow its own strategy according to the dictates of the ground situation. Q: How did this whole situation arise? What are the challenges? You are very familiar with Pakistan, having covered this area and been engaged with Pakistani for long, and so you know the peculiarity of NWFP – the North West Frontier Province. FATA – the Federally Administered Tribal Areas – in particular, is semi-autonomous. It is a tribal society with its own code of conduct, norms, culture, traditions and customs. And they follow strictly the Pathan-Pushtun codes of Pashtoonwali. Therefore, it is a little different from the rest of Pakistan. The whole system of FATA stands on four pillars. One is the FCR – Frontier Crimes Regulations. This is the law there, which was introduced by the British in 1901. The second is the FC – Frontier Code – which is basically for policing the area and law enforcement. The third is the Malik – the tribal chief of the area – the leaders of the areas. And the fourth is the political agent – the political administrator of the area – which is the representative of the government. You remove any one pillar and the whole FATA system would be imbalanced. In the last three to four decades, there has been a lot of activity in the area. The West wanted to defeat the Soviets and so they mobilized the area. There was a lot of pumping of the money from various countries. The Afghan refugees came from the first war and spread out all over the frontier province. One of consequences was that the Maliks came into conflict with the religious clergy. The clergy took control of that war and prevailed upon the Maliks. In the process, many Maliks were eliminated in order to create a vacuum for the clergy to fill and take over the leadership of the area. This has disturbed the whole society there. Now, the youth is on the move, armed with money as well as guns, and there is a lot of militant activity also. But these youth are generally not following the old customs or religious code of the area. This is the problem in our northwest at the moment. In the wake of 9/11, the second war of the Americans in Afghanistan, created a new situation that brought different dynamics into the area. We are now trying to address the situation. The state of Pakistan is guilty of not taking development into these areas which remained underdeveloped for a very long time. Q: Where does the Pakistani Taleban figure in all this? Is it the unifying force? A: Despite their claim that it is monolithic organization the Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan still feels that it has a loose confederation or a loose linkage with the Taleban of the other areas. Q: Do they have a strategic link with the Taleban of Afghanistan. A: There are various linkages in this. One is their loose linkage with the Afghanistan Taleban. There is no direct or monolithic organization. Within itself, within the Pakistan State and within FATA, they have claimed that they are one, but we know that the dynamics of every (provincial) agency is different. The dynamics of Swat, which is a settled area, are different. The Taleban of Swat have a different aspiration, different aims and objectives. Basically they claim that it is a religious war, but then it is also about power, money and authority in the area. Take the example of Bajaur. Bajaur was claimed to be ruled by Fakeeh Muhammad whom Baitullah Mehsud has declared as his deputy. But when Fakeeh Muhammad's forces were operating against our forces, when we went there, we saw that nobody came from Waziristan or outside to support or take over the war, except for a group that came from Afghanistan, under Qazi Zia-ur-Rehman. They were the Afghan Taleban. They wanted to help. But they not only helped – they gained space in Bajaur. Fakeeh Muhammad had previously fought and removed the Frontier Corps (FC) and the administration from the area and virtually declared it as his own emirate. Short of declaring independence from Pakistan, he was virtually ruling. Since Qazi Zia-ur-Rehman was helping him, he was also given a certain area. So this is a turf war there also. This is a war for power, authority, domination and rule. Now, when the military operated against him, they beat the hell out of him and removed him. So, there is no Fakeeh Muhammad and no Qazi Zia-ur-Rehman now in Bajaur. The FC has gone in, the civilian administration has gone in, and development is following. The point I'm making is that it is a loose arrangement of linkages between the Taleban groups and not one complete organization. Q: The history, tribalism, the gangsters, the drug-runers – you operating against several kinds of opponents. How do you identify them, avoid collateral damage? A: There are constraints of operating in your own area and against your own people. No counter-insurgency operation can succeed unless you have the endorsement of the public – the public against whom you are operating, which is in front of you or all around you, and also the public at the national level, which must back your operation when you are going in there. I think the biggest problem is of collateral damage. When you go in, you cannot avoid 100 percent collateral damage, because the security forces do not have the kind of advantage that the militants or the insurgents have. They can take cover among the people of the area, in the structures that are built in the area. They can take the people as human shields, hold them as hostages, coerce them, use them by using terror as a weapon. These are the constraints the military has. The military is trained mostly to see in black and white. When the military is given an objective in a conventional setup, it is sure of the objective, and it has an assurance that three of its sides are covered, and the enemy is in front, the objective is in front. You are told in military training to see in black and white. Anything moving in the objective area is the enemy. Kill. Use your maximum firepower to eliminate that. But while operating in these circumstances, you cannot see in only black and white. There is a huge gray. And you have to acquire an ability to see through that gray, in order to separate the militant from the civilian. Q: There are accusations that the military has bombed civilian targets. A: This is not entirely untrue. This happens in some cases. But tell me, if you are closing in on a built-up area and from a rooftop four militants are firing at you and you have to take cover and there are casualties of your soldiers also, and you have to engage them and clear them one after the other, what do you do? What if you blast that house by direct firing of heavy weapons and kill four of them and then you come to know that there were 12 civilians under the house who were taken hostage? These are the kinds of problems the military confronts. When you see your soldiers getting killed right and left, that is when you have to take a decision – whether you have to go through a long process of clearing the house by using more force and completely going around the area, or whether you blast that house. This is the decision that a commander is required to take. Q: Which is the theater of operations? Is it limited to Buner, Swat, and Dir or will it expand? A: At the moment, the military is free from Bajaur and Wana because we have conducted the operations there. Notwithstanding a few pockets of resistance in Wana, the whole focus now is on Malarkand division, and Swat is a part of that. The military's task now is to clear the districts of Malarkand division. Swat is the center of gravity, the hub of the militants and therefore it would require a major military operation to clear the Valley. Q: Have you set a timeframe for this operation? A: It is very difficult to give a duration. Timelines cannot be given because the resistance in the medium is so flexible, so fluid that any timeline would be very difficult to follow or meet. Q: But the objective would be met? A: Absolutely. The objective is very clear – to eliminate – clear the militants of the entire Swat Valley. Q: Will the war stop if the militants down their arms? Or is that agreement over? A: It's over. The government has declared that enough time had been given to the other side, TNSN (Tehrik-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi) as well as Fazlullah – and the government has taken a lot of criticism on that. One point which is very important: This is our problem and we will come up with home-grown solutions. Despite all the pressures from various quarters, including the external pressure, the government took the decision to go into a reconciliatory process with the militants in its own national interest. It decided that this was the line which serves us better. Because of our local problem, a local solution was evolved. Therefore, regardless of any criticism from within or without, the government would follow whatever is best for its people or for its national interest. But, given enough time, they refused, they stopped, they continued with their militant activities etc, and started moving into the other districts also. So this was when the government gave them the final warning. But they did not heed the warning and therefore the government decided to discontinue the peace process and start a harder option, which is the military operation. Q: Some sections of the society say that the option of a political solution has not been given enough time? A: In our judgment, much more time was given for a political solution. But somehow there are other factors also in this. Like, the militants feel that if they lay down their arms, the people would go after them because of the brutalities and atrocities they have carried out in the area. This is their major concern. Because of the kind of things they have done in the Valley against the State as well as the people, they have a fear that with the Qazi courts in the area, the people would be either directly taking revenge or going to the Qazi courts in order to get justice. Q: What forced the military to go for the Swat operation this time around? A: There are a couple of factors. The military first went into Swat Valley in Nov. 2007, when the government's negotiations with the militants broke down and they were not willing to leave the area or concede to the demands of the government. Within five weeks the military cleared the Swat area and about 100 of them were killed and the rest of them were pushed into the north. Thereafter came the elections, and after the elections came the deal. With the deal the militants returned to the area, reasserted themselves and reorganized and regrouped in the area. The resistance in the medium increased. They sorted out all those who were helping the military, the State and the government, so as to carry on with their operations. And when the miltary was asked to carry out the second phase of the operation, the militants were very entrenched in the people around them, because of the coercion, terrorism and all that. The resistance had increased manifold. The military realized that the only option was to use its strength, which is in firepower. And when firepower was used, it resulted in death, destruction, damage and displacement. This became a cause for major hue and cry among the public. Yes, there were 100 militants in an area of say about 10,000, and to kill them, yes, there were civilian casualties in this area. With the locals in front fed up of the militants as well as the military action – because somehow or the other they could not foresee peace returning early in their lives – and a divided national public opinion in the back, the military found itself in a vacuum. That was the time when the government also was feeling the pressure of public opinion, and it was decided to either halt the operation and provide a reconciliatory effort to succeed or take the hard option – the military option. So the TNSM of Sufi Mohammed was used as a main interlocutor between the government and the militants. That was the time when the people had not realized that the militants had some other designs, a different agenda. It was on 12th Feb. that this agreement was signed. Today we are sitting in May. There has been a number of talks with the TNSM as well as the Fazlullah group. But somehow, while the negotiations were continuing their activities were also continuing. They never stopped armed patrolling of the streets of Swat. They stopped even the military logistics convoys from moving freely in the area. They kept on kidnapping, taking over government buildings and private property, killing security forces of the police as well as the military, and also enhancing their space by moving into other neighboring districts. They were reminded that we were in negotiations and they have to abide by the agreement clauses. And this was the time when the people of our country saw the real face of the militant Taleban of Swat. They saw that they were not genuinely interested in any peace process, any return of normalcy in the area. Honestly, the military has taken a lot of criticism from the society for this agreement. The government too has taken a lot of bashing. There has been tremendous external pressure on the State about why the agreement had been reached with the militants. To those who blame the military as well as the government – that the government is working according to the dictates of the outside power – well, this (the peace process) proves the point that we took the decision in our own national interests to resolve a local problem through a local solution. Q: Do you have any high value target in your operations. A: The leadership of this group. Q: Sufi Mohammed? A: Not Sufi Mohammed but Fazlullah. Sufi Mohammed's is a non-militant group. He's not the target. He's free to go anywhere he wants. Q: Then why was Sufi Mohammed's son Kifayatullah killed? A: His son was killed in a skirmish between the security forces and the Taleban militants. He was on the Taleban militants' side, engaged with the security forces. He was killed along with 10 other militants. Q: How big is the militant force? A: There are 4,000 to 5,000 militants in this area. Q: What kind of weapons do they use? A: They have small arms, basically AK-47, rifles and other automatic weapons, RPGs, rocket launchers and various types of mortars. Huge quantities of explosives are also available to them, which they use for making improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They also use recoilless rifles (RRs) which is a big gun. Q: Where do they get these from? A: The Afghan border. Q: Do you think that there are foreign elements also involved? A: We are reasonably sure that hostile intelligence agencies who are not well-wishers of Pakistan are aiding them. Q: Do you think that there are the “good” Taleban and the “bad” ones – the militants, gangsters, drug runners and others who claim to be Taleban and are trying to benefit from this situation? A: Yes there are criminals who have joined and taken advantage of the vacuum in rule of law in the area. But looking beyond “good” and “bad” we consider them as enemies of the State, who pick up the gun to dictate their own philosophy or terms on the “other” or the society. For us, these are anti-State elements. Other than that, if a person has extreme views about anything and he is propagating without putting a gun to your head, he is from our side and he has the right to do that. Q: President Zardari has requested the United States to support the operation and provide intelligence. What kind of input have they given? A: We are quite capable of handling this threat of militancy. We have the resolve, the capability, and our army's training standards are as good as any other army's. We are very proud of our armed forces, our system, our organization, and our training standards. In this peculiar conflict, since the army takes ages to build up a capability – we took ages – decades – to build up a capability which was India-specific, because there was the threat to the State of Pakistan. Now the situation in front of us has its own peculiarity and demands. We feel that what we lack now is not the training, motivation or resolve. What we require is technical assistance, in the form of good surveillance where we are forewarned about the moves of these militants in the area. Our air force – our helicopters – and our ground forces also need the ability to see at night. Support is required in air mobility – helicopters – since the area is so rugged and does not have good infrastructure – it does not have a communications system which connects speed roads from one side to the other. Q: Support from the Americans? A: Whosoever is interested in supporting us, we would welcome them. This would increase our capability and enhance our efficiency and effectiveness. And this would save the lives of our soldiers and officers. Q: But there could be interference also from such support, resulting in adverse public opinion. A: We know where to draw the lines, where our interests – long-term or short-term – finish and where our interests begin to get harmed. We will not do anything which, because of the quick-fix need or their short-term gains starts harming our long-term interest in the area. This is our territory, these are our people, this is our culture, and this is our country. Q: Pakistan is now for the second time fighting a war on behalf of the US – the first was the war on terror in the tribal area after 9/11. A: There is absolutely no way that the State of Pakistan and the government and the military would agree to anything that is not in our long-term interest. Both the sides have to adjust so that the gap between our capabilities and their expectations is reconciled. That can only happen when you remove the distrust, try and understand and resolve others' problems through homegrown solutions rather than imposing a solution from the outside. Q: Is this is an open-ended war? A: I won't say that, but it is a long war and we are preparing for that. The notion of victory is very different in a non-conventional or insurgency-operations war. It is only overwhelming public support in the area, when they decide that the writ of the government is restored and functional, I think that is the sign of success. But if you mean to say that the last militant has been eliminated from the area, that is not possible. Sporadic incidents in the area would keep happening. __
