Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 March 2010 17.30 GMT

Pakistan’s army, the bedrock of an otherwise fragile state, may not be the most progressive institution. But recent developments suggest that military leaders realise it needs to change, even if key concerns remain.

No issue puts Pakistan under the international spotlight more than its relationship with Islamist militancy. Questions over its continued links with the Taliban and other jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba – widely believed to be responsible for the murderous attacks on Mumbai – have fuelled doubts over its capacity to bring stability to the region. At the heart of the debate is Pakistan’s army, an at once nebulous yet strangely cohesive collective that has been blamed for playing a double game that has irked foreign allies and domestic hardliners alike.

Those fears have led the army to some significant conclusions. At a press conference with foreign journalists last month, the usually media-shy army chief Pervez Kayani noted that a “Talibanised” society at home or in Afghanistan was not in Pakistan’s interests.

Those remarks have been backed with action. In the last two years, Pakistan’s security forces have at last met a homegrown Taliban insurgency with significant force and skill. Their counterinsurgency capacity has increased from virtual non-existence in 2004, when a new insurgency later to be called the Pakistan Taliban started to force the state to reach humiliating ceasefire agreements in the tribal areas. Now there is a major military presence in each of the country’s seven tribal areas, while Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan and Bajaur have been captured.

Most significant of all, Pakistan has finally cracked down on the senior Afghan Taliban leadership sheltering in its territory. It is too early to measure the nature and significance of these captures – there are doubts as to Pakistan’s true intentions in detaining erstwhile militant allies at a time when US-led forces are engaged in a massive operation in Afghanistan. It is widely believed here that Pakistan was effectively forced into future negotiations by the US over integrating insurgents into the Afghan state by, quite literally, capturing their leaders.

Even if that most cynical of explanations is accurate, however, the military establishment’s decision to target the Afghan Taliban is a brave move. What has caused the shift in policy?

“The difference is that Pakistan is now facing the spectre of [terrorism by] Taliban groups at home,” says long-time army observer Shuja Nawaz. In the years following Pakistan’s decision to cut formal ties with the Taliban in 2001, military operations in the lawless frontier with Afghanistan were angrily derided in the media and mosques as part of a foreign agenda to divide the country. One reason the insurgents have targeted civilians in Pakistan is to stoke this anger.

But an escalation of deadly suicide attacks in most major cities since 2008 has created tremendous anger towards the insurgents. Just as important, however, has been a successful propaganda campaign to convince the population that this is their war.

It has helped that current army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has earned widespread respect as a modest man focused on military matters – even if in reality the army still looms large over domestic politics. Unlike his predecessor, former army chief and president Pervez Musharraf, Kayani has generally avoided rhetorical flourishes or getting involved in public politics.

All the more reason, then, that Kayani’s few public statements are worth noting. After promising not to get the army involved in politics as Musharraf had before, for example, Kayani refused to support the Zardari government when it tried to suppress peaceful mass protests in support of an independent judiciary last year.

Still, serious questions remain. This has been a dirty war, and security forces stand accused of atrocities like reprisal killings against perceived Taliban sympathisers and indiscriminate bombardments that have also killed thousands and displaced millions. And despite operations against the Taliban within its borders, the recent fidayeen attack on Kabul targeting Indian nationals bore sobering similarities to previous violence in the Afghan capital likely sponsored by Pakistan.

India remains the great foreign policy challenge in Pakistani eyes. Although troop levels in the disputed Kashmir region have slightly decreased and formal dialogue has recommenced, army observers remain concerned by India’s continued influence in Afghanistan. That is why, along with conciliatory speeches, Kayani has reiterated that India remains Pakistan’s “primary concern”.

But international pressure to abandon the anti-India narrative is likely to leave the army “floundering to craft a fresh narrative based on ‘Islam’,” argues Chatham House analyst Farzana Shaikh. During last year’s independence day celebrations, Kayani said that Pakistan was achieved in the name of Islam. With no consensus on what that precisely means, however, the military’s search for an Islamic narrative, Shaikh adds, “is almost certainly doomed to failure”.

These contradictions do not make for easy categorisation. They also suggest that the army is still grappling with a new geopolitical dynamic. At the very least, it deserves credit for trying to adapt to the changed landscape.

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Source url: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/pakistan-army-terrorism