US
President Barack Obama has signed the Haqqani Network Terrorist Designation Act of
2012 into law. The US Secretary of State now has 30 days to submit a report on
whether the group meets the legal criteria for being designated as a foreign
terrorist organisation (FTO).
They
asked us if we had any objections. We shrugged our shoulders and said the
Haqqanis are an Afghan group, your problem. Go ahead and do what you want.
Difficult
to figure out who is more stupid, they or we, but one thing is sure: the
negative fallout for us will be bigger than for them.
We
are now also planning to go into North Waziristan. When I interviewed
Commander ISAF, General John Allen, he told me that Nato-ISAF will pay “extra
attention” to any spill-over that may occur because of the operation.
Encouraging
words but the reality may be different. Regional Command East, headquartered in
Bagram, doesn’t have enough deployments in the east. The bulk of the forces
belong to the Afghan National Army (ANA). As for the ANA, the less said the better.
So, unless the Nato-ISAF is either prepared to beef up deployment or keep its
aerial platforms ready — limited effectiveness against an adversary that won’t
give a concentrated target — much of the spill-over will spill over.
Should
we go into the NWA? Tough question, this. There’s the moral-legal argument.
It’s our territory and we should be in control of it. Agreed. An operation will
also let off some of the heat that the American narrative has put on us. (NB:
for the American narrative of “victory”, a very good read is Michael Hastings’ The Operators.)
But
anything beyond the moral-legal? Not much, I am afraid. Physical dominance of
territory in irregular war is always of limited value, more a matter of
creating an illusion of victory than being victorious. American operations in Helmand are a case in point. There
are other cases.
What
will the groups in NWA do against a superior force? As I wrote in this space in June last year, “…rather than losing
too many men in pitched battles, the groups will disperse while retaining some
fighters to engage advancing columns in combination with the use of area denial
weapons like anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines, ‘victim-operated’ IEDs and
booby traps. This means that while they will try to slow down the advance and
extract a heavy toll of advancing troops, they would not need to employ the
bulk of their forces that are likely to extricate as the operation undergoes.”
The
Haqqani fighters will go into Afghanistan where they control large swathes of
territory and where the bulk of their fighters are already based. Other groups
will disperse inland: the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Punjabi Taliban
and foreign fighters. The foreigners have nowhere to go and they will continue
to operate against Pakistan until captured or killed.
At
least in the short term this dispersal will result in heightened urban
terrorism, though I am told by sources that the intelligence agencies have been
more effective in busting urban terrorist cells and nabbing and killing their
fighters. That may be so but all indicators tell us that our counterterrorism
capacity — civilian law enforcement — falls short of what it will take to
effectively neutralise urban attacks. The reprisals will take their toll.
Two
other factors are important from an operational perspective: one, if the army
plans the operation conventionally, as one very senior officer, now retired,
told me, it will suffer huge casualties. The planning, therefore, must be
innovative. Two, if the US drones programme is as effective as it is made out
to be (see multiple claims to this end), which is presumably one reason it has
been ramped up, then why have the Americans not been able to degrade the
operational capacity of the Network, Pakistan’s objections to such strikes,
notwithstanding?
On
balance, say sources, it is important to go into NWA. Okay. But I am also told
that Pakistan should do away with its cautious attitude and play a proactive role
in facilitating the process of reconciliation in Afghanistan. To me, it seems,
such facilitation is more important in terms of strategic utility than an
operation that, like most such operations, will have a balloon effect.
Here’s
why. If, in theory, Pakistan could get the facilitation process on track, which
Kabul and Islamabad are relying on, then it should help lead to the Haqqanis
restraining themselves and becoming a part of the process. That should then
leave the Pakistan Army to deal with the TTP and its affiliates, Punjabi and
foreign elements, in NWA, a relatively less daunting operation conducted in an
enabling environment.
That
is not to be, given the development with which I began this piece. If the State
Department review establishes that there are indeed reasons to declare the
Network an FTO, it will all but put paid to the negotiating process because the
Taliban will not like to be seen as negotiating with the US, supposing that the
US actually wants to negotiate in good faith, which doesn’t seem to be the
case.
It
is from this perspective that our approach to telling the Americans to go ahead
and do what they want with the Haqqanis doesn’t make any sense, especially at a
time when we have reopened the bilateral track with Kabul. The move also turns
the environment, crucial for launching an operation in NWA, against us.
Important to remember in this kind of warfare is the basic fact that use of
force per se means nothing; it must translate into, what Rupert Smith, a former
British general, calls, the utility of force.
So,
while we plan to go into NWA, we must accept three factors: the operational
environment has been sullied by the American move to declare the Network an
FTO; the degree of difficulty of the operation has increased manifold and its
utility declined in direct proportion; finally, and most importantly, the
bilateral track with Kabul for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan may have
been set back before it could take off.
Any
guess on who will lose out in NWA?
|
