What is cooking between the US and the Pakistani Army ?

The uncovering of the residency of Osama bin Laden close to the Pakistani Military Academy in the garrison town of Abbottabad and his subsequent elimination by the US Navy SEALs in a stealth operation have created many ripples, some within Pakistan and some between Pakistan and the US.

The close bonding between the US and Pakistan had existed at multiple levels, the most important of which had been the ties between the US and Pakistani armed forces. This relationship started in the early 1950s and bloomed quite rapidly. The US made it a consistent policy to support Pakistani military dictators, whether it was FM Ayub Khan or Gen. Yahya Khan or Gen. Zia-ul-Haq or more recently Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The US Presidents and the State Department stood solidly behind these usurpers of power even as the US preached virtues of democracy to the rest of the world. In the 1970s, another important relationship also developed between the US and its client state Pakistan. The turmoil in the region meant that the US sought close partners. The bitterness after the 1962 arms-supply to India and the arms embargo of 1965 had already been overcome by 1971 when Pakistan helped the US normalize relationship with an isolated China and in return, the US condoned Pakistani genocide in East Pakistan and later sent a carrier task force of the US Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal threatening India as an act of solidarity with Pakistan. As the trusted US ally, the Shah of Iran was deposed by Shi'a fundamentalists who also held Americans as hostage in Teheran, as the Communists assumed power in Afghanistan who later invited the armed forces of the USSR into the country and as an insurgency developed in Yemen in the late 1970s, a worried US forged close intelligence tie-up between the CIA of the US and the notorious ISID of Pakistan. The relationship reached its pinnacle during the decade of the 80s when the CIA worked in extremely close proximity with the ISID in avenging the American defeat in Vietnam a decade earlier and pave the way for the unravelling of the Soviet Union in particular and Communism in general.

As the general usefulness of Pakistan waned upon the termination of the Afghan jihad, the US-Pakistan transactional relationship cooled off. That was probably also what the Pakistanis themselves wanted. A US that was so far helping the Pakistani nuclear programme both actively and passively, was suddenly becoming apoplectic with Pakistan's frenzied activities on the nuclear front. Since their clandestine nuclear and missile dealings with China, North Korea, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iran were on an upswing, the Pakistanis would have been rather uncomfortable with the presence of the born-again Americans. The terrorism and violence against India from ISI and PA-sponsored terrorist groups were also growing exponentially and it was prudent to keep it away from the prying eyes of the USA which probably was not so amenable as it was during the decade of the 80s when it even helped the Khalistani terrorism. Things were going smooth for Pakistan in the 90s, until fate intervened in the form of Osama bin Laden and 9/11 as the US and its Army got entrenched in Af-Pak once again.

The US Army on the ground in Afghanistan as part of NATO forces had never been comfortable with the Pakistani Army (PA). The CIA has been wary of ISI's double cross. The Pentagon voiced its consternation frequently. American Presidents have been forthright at times regarding their mistrust of Pakistan. Secretaries of State of US administration of various dispensations have been frustrated by the games played by the PA. There are very sound reasons why they all felt so. New York Times of June 15, 2011 reports that the CIA Deputy Director rates ISI's co-operation at 3 on a scale of 1 to 10.

For those who watch Pakistan closely, this perfidious behaviour is not surprising at all. Let's go back to the start of operations on the Pakistani side after Operation Enduring Freedom was launched by the US and allied forces. The Pakistani approach can be slotted into two different time periods, one BD or Before Democracy and the other AD, After Democracy. Initially, during BD, the PA refused to commit its forces in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Agencies) area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. Instead, it entered into a series of 'Peace Treaties' with the Taliban and various warlords in order to avoid fighting them. No Peace Treaty lasted more than a few weeks. From the very beginning, the PA was not interested in COIN (Counter Insurgency) operations in FATA and was leaving that to the local Frontier Corps (FC), Levies and Khasadar forces that are both ill-equipped and ill-trained as well as reluctant to fight their own tribes.

The first time, the PA decided to take on the Al Qaeda and Allied Movements (AQAM) was in c. 2004 when it proudly announced that PA will complete the operation in a few weeks. But, the drubbing the PA received from the AQAM was such that Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, Corps Commander, Peshawar, had to personally meet Taliban commander Nek Mohammed to sign the peace deal (at Shakai in South Waziristan in April 2004) and even give him USD 540,000 {a fact he admitted in the press meet}. Thus, PA's casualties were not only its men but also its prestige. Again, in February 2005, another deal was signed and this time with with Baitullah Mehsud after he took over power following Nek Mohammed’s assassination in a US drone attack near Wana. The six-point deal, mediated by Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI-F, while specifically forbidding him from sheltering foreign terrorists or attacking Pakistani government installations, did not stop him from attacking the US forces. Even as he signed the deal, he openly declared that under Mullah Omar, Islam will spread all over the world even as he derived satisfaction from the jihad. Similarly, in February 2008, the Pakistani Army struck another peace deal with Baitullah Mehsud after another unsuccessful army operation in late 2007. The operations by the Pakistani military in Waziristan were dubbed as “Operation Enduring Failure’ following a severe mauling of the Pakistani Army. All three Army operations - 2004, 2005 and 2007 – resulted ultimately in the Army suing for peace after suffering heavy casualties.

In the AD period, reports appeared that Gen. Kiyani had told the US that the PA would have the focus only on the Eastern borders with India. After his meeting with Pakistan, in a series of back-to-back trips to that country, Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed in June, 2008 with the Pakistani request to train the FC in COIN operations. Three months earlier, in March, 2008, when the contours of the peace deals were not yet clear and when the new government had not yet taken over power, New York Times reported the Pakistan Army’s strategy of concentrating on the India border leaving the Afghanistan border to ill-equipped and ill-trained local forces. It spoke of the kind of equipment in Pakistani shopping list with the US that could possibly not have been used against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This approach of focussing on India had multiple benefits for Pakistan. For one, the Army’s withdrawal gave a free hand to the Taliban and the NATO-ISAF forces could not hold the Pakistani Army responsible anymore. This also met the Taliban request of non-interference from Pakistan in their activities. Secondly, it took enormous resources and time to train the undisciplined local forces and that gave sufficient lead time for the Taliban to consolidate their hold in these areas. Thirdly, Pakistan demanded and got sophisticated equipment from the US under the guise of providing support and equipping the FC. Moreover, the Pakistani Army which had earned a lot of ill-will from the tribesmen because under “operation Tri-star and Earthquake”, (Op. Zalzala, meaning Earthquake, in the Mehsud area between January and April 2008) it had razed down villages as part of ‘collective punishment’. The Army’s use of artillery and Cobra gunship and even tanks, rather than effective COIN operations, had added to the resentment of the people. In the August, 2008 operations in Bajaur (Op. Sherdil or Lionheart), around Khar, in the area that the Inspector General of Frontier Corps, Maj Gen Tariq Khan called as the ‘centre of the battle’, the gunship helicopters targetted mosques and flattened houses turning people against the Government. The Pakistani masses also saw this as "Muslim Vs. Muslim" in which the PA could not be involved. With fatwas on the non-martyrdom of the Pakistani soldiers in a fight with the Taliban, the Pakistani Army was surrendering rather than fighting. The refusal to engage the PA in the COIN operation was a ploy therefore making a virtue out of necessity and was a fourth reason for the decision to pull out. Fifthly, and most significantly, what appeared to be a decision to increase infiltration across the Indian border in c. 2008 after relative lull for sometime, demanded a concentration of troops in the eastern border especially in view of the ‘Cold Start’ doctrine of India. In hindsight, the Pakistani COAS, Gen. Kayani's insistence on keeping the PA focussed on the Indian border in c. 2008 was because he was aware of the imminent terrorist attacks on Indian interests on the anvil. The July 7, 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the urban warfare in Mumbai on November 26, 2008 were jointly organized by the ISI, the PA, the Pakistani Navy and the LeT and so one can safely conclude that Gen. Kayani, under whose watch these terror events had been planned when he was the ISI Chief, wanted to be able to meet any fall-out arising from these events. Gen. Kayani called the Taliban his 'strategic assets', a communication that was intercepted by the Americans in May 2008, a few months before the Indian embassy attack in Kabul, and which confirmed the long-held suspicion that the PA was running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. Later, the newly-elected Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, used exactly the same idiom to own up Pakistani duplicity.

The above malicious behaviour of Pakistan brings out two Pakistani traits. One, Pakistan's obsession with India and two, its ability to turn that obsession into an advantage vis-a-vis the gullible Americans.

Back to the Af-Pak badlands in c. 2008. The US State Department’s annual “Country Reports on Terrorism” released in May 2008, spoke of Al Qaeda having regrouped effectively within Pakistan and posing the gravest threat to Western interests. The loss of control of its own territory by Pakistan prompted the ex-National Security Advisor of India, Brajesh Mishra, to propose a multinational force to tackle terrorism in Pakistan. NATO expressed concern in mid-May, 2008 that the so called peace pacts “struck by the Pakistan government and extremist groups in the Tribal Areas may be allowing them to have a safe haven”. It also said in April 2008, after the peace talks gained momentum, that the incidents of cross-border attacks had increased by 52% from the same period the previous year. NATO also expressed its annoyance that Pakistan was entering into pacts without taking it into confidence, an oblique reference to the MNNA (Major Non-NATO Ally) status of Pakistan. NATO correctly interpreted the peace deals as ‘transfer of troubles from one side of the border to the other’. On the same day NATO issued this warning, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South Asia said that “Insurgents in Pakistan’s frontier region continue to pose a serious threat to the regional stability of the United States and the rest of the world”. In another testimony to the US Congress at the same time, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, said that the next attack on US in near-term would come from Al Qaeda regrouping in the FATA regions of Pakistan. Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta called “such [Pakistani] appeasement [of the Taliban] dangerous for Afghanistan” and it was "extremely and infinitely concerned" about Islamabad's moves. Then, on June 11, 2008, the US Air Force attacked inside Pakistani border in Mohmand agency in which several Pakistani Frontier Corps (FC) men were killed. What gave the game away was that several Taliban terrorists were also killed in the attack, as accepted by TTP spokesperson Maulvi Umar, thereby suggesting some nexus between Pakistan’s FC and the Taliban. A few days later, the outgoing US Commander in Afghanistan, Gen Dan K McNeill, questioned the loyalty of the Pakistani forces, especially the FC. The Guardian newspaper later reported, citing classified US reports, that the FC had been heavily infiltrated into by the Taliban and was influenced by it. The displeasure with which the US looked at the peace deals with the Taliban was evident when an hour-long ‘candid, frank, realistic and honest’ discussion between Condoleeza Rice and the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, ended on June 11, 2008 without any positive developments for Pakistan. Admiral Mullen had repeatedly said that the Pakistani Army was not fighting the Taliban in a sustained fashion. For his part, President Obama made it clear on more than one occasion that the Pakistanis were barking a wrong tree by considering the Indians as the most major threat and that there was no need to station so many troops on the eastern borders with India.

For his part, Afghan President Karzai said that most fighters in Helmand province had come from Pakistan, a concern also echoed by NATO forces. He then followed it up with the threat of attacking the Taliban terrorists inside Pakistan. In anger, it announced pulling out of bilateral talks. India also pulled out of scheduled anti terrorism talks between its CBI and the FIA of Pakistan, after the attack on its Kabul embassy. The Pakistani Defence Minister Mukhtar said that the US President George Bush admitted to him that the US was reluctant to share intelligence information with Pakistan because elements within ISI were leaking them to the Taliban and thwarting US actions. He was even reported to have asked Prime Minister Gilani when he visited the White House in late August, 2008 as to who was in charge of the ISI. On Sep. 16, 2008. US Asst. Secretary Richard Boucher said that the reform of the ISI was a must and it was not happening yet. This led to the removal of Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj as the Head of the ISI on Sep. 29, 2008. Even the Deputy Chief of ISI was replaced. Finally, with mounting losses of US & other NATO forces approaching the levels of Iraq at its peak, about two dozen US Navy SEALs raided inside Pakistan on Sep. 3, 2008, for the first time and killed 20 people in Angoor Adda, South Waziristan. The US Navy Seals were dropped on ground within FATA and they remained there for a couple of hours destroying targets. There has been speculation that Gen. Kiyani, along with his DGMO (Director General of Military Operations), were told of American intentions of more serious ground operations in a meeting they had with Adm. Mullen held on Aug. 27, 2008 unusually on board an an aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Persian Gulf. The very next day, Pakistani COAS Gen. Kayani strongly lashed out at the US proposal to mount cross-border attacks inside Pakistan. The New York Times reported the same day that Bush had authorized in July cross-border attacks into Pakistan with ‘boots on the ground’ within Pakistani territory. It followed the American assessment of Pakistani Army ‘lacking will and ability’. American officials concluded, as per the report in New York Times article dated Sep. 24, 2009, that the ISID was helping the Taliban. The US Ambassador to Pakistan, Ms. Anne Patterson, voiced the disappointment that Pakistan was “certainly reluctant to take action” against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency. Simultaneously, there was a talk of extending the drone attacks to Quetta where the Taliban Shura was supposed to be holed up. Western intelligence sources (Times, Sep. 27, 2009) also reported that the Pakistani intelligence agencies, fearing such an attack, had shifted some members of the Quetta Shura to the much safer Karachi. Pakistan strongly denied the existence of anything called a Quetta Shura at all. However, On Dec. 14, 2009, the Pakistani Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, said that the Quetta Shura has been significantly damaged by the armed forces and was no longer a threat, thus conceding that the Quetta Shura after all existed.

(To be continued . . .)

A Perspective of the American and Chinese Presence in Pakistan

A couple of days back, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America, accused the notorious ISI of Pakistan of being complicit with the Haqqani Network of Afghanistan who were after all fighting, killing and maiming American soldiers. The accusation was not surprising at all for anybody who had followed Pakistani policies. In another blog, I will possibly write about the nexus between the ISI and the Haqqani Shura. Various US officials and field-level Army officers have time and again vented their frustration with Pakistan ever since the launch of Global War on Terror (GWoT) in c. 2002. But, what was surprising was the direct accusation coming from the highest ranking American General. There have been ups and downs in the US-Pakistani relationship ever since they firmed up one in the 1950s. But, this downslide has come at a particularly interesting time when the drawdown of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is about to start in a couple of months' time. What went wrong ? Why is China compensating for this down turn by increasing its presence within Pakistan ? The two are interlinked as we shall see.

Since the time of its violent birth in c. 1947, Pakistan has been driven by an obsession of India. This all-consuming obsession has led her to several problems, including the threat to its very existence today. Among other disastrous consequences of this obsession has been its quest to seek an unattainable parity with or even superiority to its much larger Eastern neighbour in military matters. One of the ways it chose to achieve this goal was to identify itself as part of the Western alliances such as SEATO and CENTO in the 50s. In those heady early days, Pakistan was even willing to antagonize important members of the Islamic world such as Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. By identifying itself so closely with one party to the Cold War, Pakistan put itself in harm’s way in the U2 episode when the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev threatened to obliterate Pakistan. Later, it again helped the US in its geopolitical and geostrategic goal of defeating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics(USSR) even though it entailed the greatest cost to itself due to the spawning of sectarianism, terrorism, illicit drugs and small arms. After c. 1962, when India and China clashed in the Himalayas, Pakistan sought friendship with the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) while still being a member of the anti-Communist Western alliances. Again, the only motivating factor was the unbridled obsession with India which drove it to establish friendship with the enemy of its enemy. Pakistan concluded a border agreement in c. 1963 with the PRC, ceded the Shaksgam Valley which belonged to the State of Jammu & Kashmir. The two countries have not looked back since then in their relationship. Similarly, it created various jihadi outfits to inflict a ‘thousand cuts to bleed India to death’. Pakistan thought that by micromanaging these groups, and by splitting them whenever they became too large, it could successfully keep them under tight control. However, today, these very same evil groups have turned back on their creator and are overrunning them. Thus, Pakistan has had to pay a very heavy price in its unprincipled and cavalier policies blinded as it has been by India.

Pakistan’s founder leaders had no idea about governance of the new state they were about to create in the name of religion. They felt that the munificence of the British who helped bisecting India for their geostrategic reasons, would not let them down even though they knew that Great Britain was on the decline. Propelled by the British notion of Pakistan being at the core of geostrategic calculations of the Western world due to its proximity to the new found ‘wells of power’ in West Asia, as a buffer state against expansion of Russian communism and as a refueling station for military transport in their long haul across the Indian subcontinent to East Asia, the Far East and Australia, Pakistan concluded that the Americans needed Pakistan more than they needed the Americans. In its calculation however was the hidden agenda that such a relationship would help them offset the natural superiority enjoyed by India economically, militarily and diplomatically. A country that prided itself as the only Muslim state created exclusively on the basis of religion, was even willing to forego its ambition of assuming the mantle of the Caliphate left vacant by the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire by Mustapha Kemal Ataturk. Pakistan perforce had to side with the Western powers against powerful Muslim countries in such issues as the abrogation of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty on the Suez Canal, in the British-French-Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, and even in the creation of Israel.

No less opportunistic has been Pakistan’s friendship with China. The Pakistanis began to show interest in China after the Tibet uprising and the eventual asylum of the Dalai Lama in India in c. 1959. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a then rising star in Pakistani political firmament, advised President Ayub Khan to develop a closer relationship with China. His anti-Americanism and his belief in socialism shaped in his mind the contours of a relationship with China even as Pakistan was furiously going ahead with its Western alliance. The 1962 Indo-China War was a watershed for Pakistan too. An already smouldering Pakistan-US military relationship, mainly on account of squabbles over equipping the newly created divisions of the Pakistani Army, was exacerbated by the American arms assistance to India, prompting angry Pakistani leaders to look up to China. They quickly concluded the border agreement which had not made any progress for several years, even conceding about 5000 Sq. Kms of the Shaksgam Valley contravening international norms. More dangerous transgressions were to follow. Ayub Khan and the young Foreign Minister Z.A. Bhutto began a series of manoueveres with the Chinese to get nuclear know-how as soon as China exploded a device in October, 1964. In his manuscript "If I am Assassinated" written from his death cell, Z.A.Bhutto has clearly said that the negotiations with the Chinese started in c. 1965 and Foreign Secretary Late Agha Shahi has since confirmed that. Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s (PAEC) chief Dr. Munir Akram recalls FM Ayub Khan saying in late 1965 that ‘ . . . if needed, Pakistan could get it from China’, referring to the nuclear weapons. This arrangement eventually culminated in China transferring actual nuclear weapons, missiles, enriched Uranium, and other components for enrichment in exchange for the more advanced URENCO process of enrichment that A.Q. Khan spirited away from the Dutch facility and in helping the clandestine purchase of components and machinery for setting up the enrichment facility in PRC. Much earlier, Pakistan had also helped China break out of its isolation by normalizing its relationship with the USA, even as Pakistan itself was being violently divided due to genocide in East Pakistan. The economic powerhouse of China, which today it is, thus owes a lot of gratitude to Pakistan. The China-Pakistan relationship has scaled heights ‘taller than the tallest mountains’ and depths ‘deeper than the deepest oceans’ as the two sides never fail to mention frequently.

Thus, Pakistan's foreign policies have never been founded on any sound principles of 'national interest' other than those of sheer expediency and opportunism in order to destroy India. Pakistan has had to pay an unacceptable price for its tactically brilliant but strategically stupid and unattainable policies, but neither the Pakistani society nor its leaders have felt any remorse for their actions which have pushed their nation today into a deep abyss. Today, Pakistan is buffeted by a serious threat from the Al Qaeda and Allied Movements (AQAM) for its very survival as a nation-state, sectarian violence, intolerance not just for non-Muslims but even among the various Muslim sects, a dismal economy which is surviving on the doles of the IMF and about four friendly nations (the US, Saudi Arabia, Japan and the UK), an increasingly shrinking space where the writ of the State runs, entrenched sub-nationalism, and a label of being the migraine and a central hub of worldwide terrorism. All these can be directly attributed to the fateful decision to cede sovereignty to the US, China and Saudi Arabia. Such a cession was necessitated, in turn, by the ambition to attain its goals vis-à-vis India, goals etched in concrete by the early leaders and assiduously followed by the successors.

The tragic events of 9/11 thrust Pakistan into limelight once again for all the wrong reasons. As is its wont, Pakistan saw an opportunity even amidst the gloom of being reduced to a rubble and being taken back to stone-age. It offered its unstinted services to the USA and hoped to resurrect its relationship with that country which was at its nadir then. More importantly, it also wished to stem the growing India-US engagement which was being interpreted as a threat for itself. Thus, it hoped to correct the perceived tilt in US policies favouring India. It also saw a window of opportunity to acquire American arms and ammunition apart from getting large funds just as in the decade of the 50s and 80s. It was also Pakistan’s calculation that with the US once again dependent on it due to its geographical advantages, it will get a free hand in pressurizing India on Kashmir and other issues through not only diplomacy but terrorism as well, just as it happened in the 80s when terrorism in the Indian Punjab was instigated. This is where it differed from a host of other countries which also demanded and got various favours from the US for their support for the US prosecution of war on Al Qaeda.

Pakistan therefore gave the US permission to use its airbases at Jacobabad, Dalbandin, Shamsi, Pasni, naval base at Ormara and several unmarked airstrips in Balochistan to operate drones. It allowed it unhindered airspace during the initial stages of the war on terror. It allowed logistics to support troops in Afghanistan through the Karachi Port and the Indus Highway to Khyber pass in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Agencies) and Chaman pass in Balochistan It allowed the CIA to operate freely within the country, setup electronic listening posts, capture Al Qaeda suspects including Pakistanis and deport them secretively elsewhere. These Pakistani policies were to result in a severe blowback later, but, for the moment Pakistan was benefitting from its surrender of sovereignty. Apart from the write-off of some debts and the postponement in repayments of most others by over two decades, Pakistan was getting sophisticated arms ostensibly to fight terrorists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, like F-16s, AMRAAM, naval ships, Harpoon missiles etc !!

Pakistan also extracted other tangible benefits as well from such unstinted support. One such famous benefit was the Kunduz airlift which was authorized at the Presidential level within the US to allow Gen. Musharraf to save his face and possibly his skin by airlifting over a thousand Pakistanis including ISI officers, regular Pakistani soldiers of the Frontier Corps and possibly some members of Pakistani terrorist outfits, from Kunduz in north-east Afghanistan in mid November, 2001. For the location of Kunduz, see map below.

Map Courtesy: The United Nations

To send hundreds of Pakistani Army regulars and ISI officers as far away as Kunduz to fight the Northern Alliance of Ahmed Shah Masoud, demonstrates how much Pakistan values the 'Strategic Depth' of Afghanistan. When they were finally airlifted to the safety of Pakistan, they were simply let go. Several of those charged with many assassination attempts on Gen. Musharraf later in c. 2003 were former soldiers who were airlifted out of Kunduz. Many of them later also joined Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) set up by Maulana Masood Azhar (with the help of the ISI) who was released from an Indian prison in December, 1999 in exchange for the release of the hijacked IC-814 flight. It is these Punjabi Taliban (mostly from Punjab and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir,POK) who are wreaking extensive havoc within Pakistan today. Thus, the Kunduz airlift not only helped Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders to escape, but also deeply affected personally the man who requested that, Gen. Musharraf and far more importantly has brought Pakistan to its knees today by rehabilitating hundreds of battle-hardened and vengeful jihadists. Pakistan’s tactical decisions, while looking impressive at that moment, have thus brought that nation only strategic misery.

As the Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban groups escaped into Pakistan’s unruly FATA with the support of Pashtun tribal leaders on either side of the Durand Line and also the Pakistani Army at the border checkposts, they later re-grouped to take on the NATO and Afghan forces. One strategy employed by the Al Qaeda and Taliban was to bring under a common umbrella the various other jihadi outfits and warlords operating within Pakistan and in FATA. Thus, the Islamic International Front (IIF) of Osama bin Laden truly morphed into what is today known as AQAM with the merging of the various Pakistani terrorist tanzeems. Thus, Tehrik-e-Taliban, Pakistan (TTP) was formed (officially in c. 2007) to coordinate efforts within Pakistan given the fact that the Taliban needed to marshal the meagre and battered resources well against the mighty forces of the US, NATO and Pakistan arrayed against them. This was a tough task because of the oftentimes conflicting clannish loyalties, inter-tribal rivalries and independent warlords. The effort of unification took a long time and has not been a complete success either but it survived and has been fairly successful over the years. Though the AQAM leadership knew that Pakistan would not get too close to the Americans for AQAM’s comfort, they still needed to ensure that, by creating the TTP which maintained enough pressure on the Government and the Army of Pakistan. With Islamist-military leaders like Gen. Aslam Beg, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul and Col. Imam guiding them, the AQAM knew only too well what perfidy Pakistan was capable of. Therefore, they needed to establish the Caliphate in FATA and TTP was the force to capture space, establish the rule there and maintain it. This is the first of the twin objectives of TTP.

Already the Pakistani terrorist tanzeem, Harkat-ul-Ansar (later renamed as Harkat-ul-Jihadi-al-Islami or HuJI and the original bearer of the tag, Punjabi Taliban) occupied an important place in the governing structure of Afghanistan during the heady days of the Taliban there. Later, Jaish-e-Mohammed also threw its weight behind Al Qaeda and Taliban. Others like the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the Ahl-e-Hadith Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Wahhabi Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) of Maulana Sufi Mohammed of Malakand, Brigade 313 of Ilyas Kashmiri, the Karachi-based Jandullah of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the Berelvi terrorist organization Sunni Tehrik and the mother of all Pakistani terrorist organizations Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) coalesced with them making the AQAM a formidable group at least within Af-Pak. Collectively these Pakistani terrorist organizations are referred to as the Punjabi Taliban.

The latter have carried their 'Hanud' component to the 'Yahud-Nasara' conspiracy theory of Al Qaeda. The collective wisdom now seems to be that Pakistan must also be turned into Taliban-style rule so that in future the Taliban regime of Afghanistan would be secure and a worldwide assault on the kafir can be sustained. The Afghan Taliban, while still needing the support of the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan, has therefore outsourced that effort to TTP. They give the appearance of keeping the TTP at an arm's distance. The Pakistani Taliban thus seek to overthrow the Pakistani government. This is the second of the twin objectives of TTP. The Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan have no option but to continue with their support for the Afghan Taliban as they blindly continue to chase the mirage of 'strategic depth'. Like a monkey whose hand is trapped in the honey jar, the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan are thus caught in a cleft, from which they can come out only if they let go of their Indian obsession, an impossibility. Thus the Afghan Taliban is the cleverest of them all as it gets support from Pakistan while at the same time bringing it under its sphere of influence (a reverse strategic depth). While the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan believe that by supporting the Haqqani Shura and the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another old friend of the ISI, they are preparing themselves for the day after the American departure, the AQAM also believes that it has also prepared well for the same day. Pakistan therefore could be in for a rude shock when the reinstated Taliban might fall foul of their creators and mentors, the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan, because it has grown an independent mind and strategy. The assassination of Khalid Khwaja and the mujahideen and Taliban creator Col. Imam are pointers in that direction.

Today, Chinese troops are swarming all over Gilgit-Baltistan (part of the State of J&K). In circa 2009, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) entered the then ‘Northern Areas’ of POK under the guise of repairing the Karakoram Highway. See below the map of Jammu & Kashmir.

Map Courtesy: The United Nations


Later, PLA soldiers, estimated at about 11000, occupied portions of Balwaristan though the Pakistanis have denied that and said that they were merely helping the 27,000 families of Baltits who are caught on the northern side of the Attabad lake formed due to landslide in March, 2010. The Indian Army confirmed that a battalion of PLA soldiers was deployed at the Khunjerab Pass that straddles the border between Tibet and Balawaristan as part of construction of a railroad to Gwadar, Ormara & Pasni on the Pakistani Arabian Sea coast. As such construction are usually done by the PLA especially in the strategically important Karakoram areas, one can be reasonably be certain that the PLA is present in these areas in large numbers under the garb of construction activities. Satellite pictures later showed several tunnels, estimated to be 22 in number, at various places, along with convoys of trucks (likely to be PLA) and activities at road construction in these glaciated places of Balawaristan.

Amidst all this, suddenly the Chinese denied visa to the Indian Army General commanding the Northern Command under a new pretext that he was commanding troops in a ‘disputed territory’. This new formulation clearly showed that China was probably building up a case for the future. In the meanwhile, Pakistan hurriedly changed the tag, ‘Northern Areas’ to ‘Giligit Baltistan’ in c. 2010 possibly in an attempt to make it appear as a province within Pakistan and not as part of J&K. Though Pakistan occupied illegally the Gilgit-Baltistan area of the State of Jammu & Kashmir with British help, it has thus far been treating this province independent of J&K falsely claiming that the Amir and people of this region willingly acceded to Pakistan in c. 1947. The speed with which Pakistan renamed the ‘Northern Areas’ and setup an administrative structure there can be seen in a new light now in view of the presence of the PLA in these areas. This is ostensibly to thwart any Indian objections. The Officer Commanding the Northern Area of the Indian Army, Lt. Gen. K.T.Parnaik has recently said that Chinese troops were now seen stationed along the Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan. A few days later, American Intelligence agencies independently confirmed, through technical intelligence, the presence of PLA along the LoC in POK. We also know that the Chinese Air Force (PLAAF) has complete access to the most important Jacobabad airbase of the Pakistani Air Force (PAF).

The presence of China in POK is another one of those 'tactically brilliant but strategically stupid' moves. The Pakistanis may be doing this for several reasons. One, they may want to put pressure on the Americans by bringing in the Chinese so that the increasing strains between the US and Pakistan may be somewhat contained. Two, the Pakistani Army may conclude that with the significant drawdown of allied forces in Afghanistan, more Pakistani troops may need to be deployed in Af-Pak border in time to come, thus weakening the eastern border with India. They also know that it was the physical presence of the US armed forces in the region that stopped India from going to war after the 13/12 Parliament attack or even employing the Cold Start Doctrine after the 26/11 Mumbai urban warfare. With the US troops gone, India may not have any constraints in punishing Pakistan. The Pakistanis may hope the PLA's presence could act as a deterrent to India. Three, after the withdrawal of the US forces, US will not need Pakistan. From past experience, Pakistan knows that the US would not care for Pakistan after that and in the present circumstances (unlike in the Cold war era of 1989 or in 1965 or in 1972) of its close relationship with India, Pakistan would feel completely naked once that happens, in spite of nukes and missiles. The PLA boots on the ground at the border is therefore a hedge against any possible combined operation by the Yahud, Hunud and the Nasara. Four, Pakistan has concluded perhaps that the days of taking utilitarian advantage of the US are coming to an end and it would be better to jump completely on the Chinese bandwagon now.

Thus, we can clearly see the compounding of mistakes by Pakistan since c. 1947 that has brought the region and the world to the dangerous situation that it today is. Pakistan continues to pursue the same policies that were essentially to take advantage of the Cold War era equations and tactics, with certain refinements here and there. It has had mostly unstinting support from its several friends, but in the process lost a large part of its sovereignty. This has brought Pakistan to the stage today where it has to seek the help of the Chinese Army to protect its borders while it is being ravaged mercilessly from within by the very evil forces it created.