Army changes tack to root out enemy within

In the International Monetary Fund’s office in Islamabad. the calculators came out almost as soon as the troops went into the Swat valley.

A soldier keeps guard at a refugee camp in Jalozai, north-west of Islamabad

The impact on Pakistan’s budget of higher military spending, reconstruction and caring for more than 1.5m refugees is an unforeseen expense in a $7.6bn (€5.6bn, £4.9bn) IMF financial stabilisation programme.

The army’s push to dislodge Taliban forces from North West Frontier Province is likely to be costly. Commanders say the enemy is well-equipped and drawn from local areas. In the past week, more than 1,000 militants have died, while, in the parlance of the Islamic state, about 50 soldiers have “embraced martyrdom”. Civilians have fled in an exodus not seen since the creation of Pakistan out of British-ruled India 62 years ago.

Terrorist reprisals are expected in large cities in an attempt to drain civilian support for the offensive. Talk of suicide bombers targeting shopping centres is swirling around Islamabad.

The coming weeks are a reckoning for Pakistan’s army. The million-strong force – long primed for another war against the regional riva, India – is now fighting an internal conflict.

Every militant in the region will be watching what happens in Malakand and the Swat valley. Victory promises to halt a gathering militancy fed by weak justice, inequalities and scant government services; defeat would be catastrophic.

“You fight with the army that you’ve got. You don’t have time to train them for counter-insurgency,” says a senior western diplomat in Islamabad. “There’s no chance of losing this battle. They will prevail by levelling the area. This is going to take a long, long time.”

After many feints and failures over the past eight years, some of Pakistan’s generals have recognised the threat the country faces.

General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the army chief, is one of them. His senior officers now speak of the “existential threat” posed by Islamist militants who have taken territory from the government. This is a big change in an army that previously supported militants in insurgencies in Afghanistan and India, and has found it hard to cut its jihadist ties.

“An existential threat in terms of our internal security has grown over time. It needs our attention and an urgent response,” Major General Athar Abbas, head of the army’s public affairs division, told the Financial Times. “But we have to be very careful as we are operating against our own people in their own area. We have to separate the militants from the tribes. We can afford to fight the militants; we cannot afford to fight the tribes.”

The task of clearing the province of militants is not going to be easy. The militants had taken control of heavily populated areas considered part of Pakistan’s heartland, unlike the mountainous border areas. Fighting is likely to be bloody as the army tries to regain control of urban areas, such as Mingora, where large numbers of civilians are trapped.

“The border areas are unknown to most Pakistanis,” said Samina Ahmed, project director of the International Crisis Group in South Asia. “The Malakand division is a known quantity; the people are a known quantity. This makes it more difficult to fudge. It can’t be a pretend war.”

The generals say they have learned from past mistakes. “Two years back, the Frontier Corps performance was pathetic. They were ill-equipped, ill-paid, ill-trained and demoralised,” Gen Abbas said of a low point in the fight on the western border with Afghanistan. The conflict has left more than 1,500 Pakistani soldiers dead and 3,000 badly wounded.

By contrast, he said, “the success rate of this operation is not bad”.

The war could inflict a heavy price on the leadership of Asif Ali Zardari, the president.

Senior diplomats say the political leadership needs to take ownership of the anti-militant strategy and show visible support for the army. Public support could easily evaporate if the human­itarian response to the crisis is botched, the military operation kills too many people or the US overplays its role.

What happens after the military action is crucial. There are doubts over whether the government can provide the policing and welfare services to hold the territory. There are fears that it might try to revive a peace deal, which allowed the imposition of strict Islamic law in the Swat valley, once militants have been pushed back into the border areas.

Not everyone agrees with the potency of the threat. Some analysts question whether Pakistan really faces possible overthrow. They say the militants’ goals are local rather than national and that they are fighting a turf war rather than an ideological struggle.

“I don’t think it’s an existential threat, but it’s a threat to Jinnah’s Pakistan,” Maleeha Lodhi, a former ambassador to London,says referring to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder. “It’s a threat to a vision of a country supported by the majority of its people. For me that’s enough.”