Pakistan Plays It Both Ways

Pakistan continues playing games with how they intend to deal with the Taliban that have taken over an alarming amount of Pakistani territory. The Zardari government is limiting the military response to the Swat region only.

Pakistanis don't see the government succeeding with this latest offensive any more than they did with any prior military actions, precisely because the government engages in appeasement and will cave before they succeed in their military operations. Also, despite all the technological equipment provided by the US, the Pakistani military keeps falling short against the Taliban.

In other words, it doesn't matter that Zardari says that the government and country wont collapse. The facts and events in the frontier provinces suggest an instability that the government is ill-prepared to deal with.

Don't think that the Pakistani people aren't noticing either.

The Pakistani army said Friday it had lost 13 of its own men in the past 24 hours and killed 143 militants. There was no word on civilian casualties. But front-line officers report only slight gains against the thousands of militants in Swat and two neighboring districts, Buner and Lower Dir.

"This is going to be hard fighting, no quarter here. These miscreants know the terrain. They are formidable," said an army major in a telephone interview.

Pakistan's military, built for tank battles and artillery duels against Indian forces on the plains of the subcontinent, has in the past four years struggled through a series of campaigns against the Taliban across the mountains of northwestern Pakistan. Most, like the 18-month battle in Swat, ended in standstill.

The U.S. is stepping up its efforts to try to reshape Pakistan's military into a force that can fight insurgents in the rugged terrain along the Afghan border, where the Taliban and al Qaeda have flourished since being pushed from Afghanistan by U.S.-led forces in 2001.

Authorities in Pakistan say they are mobilizing to receive as many as half a million newly displaced people by fighting in and around the Swat Valley.

U.S. and Pakistani officials say the Americans will provide night-vision goggles and more helicopters. There are also plans to train Pakistani soldiers in counterinsurgency doctrine and wean them from their reliance on artillery and air power, which often flattens villages and kills more civilians than insurgents.

Still, U.S. officials privately question whether Pakistan's top brass, many of whom still see India as the real threat, are committed to reorienting their forces.

"Look at what they're doing right now," said a U.S. official in Washington, referring to the airstrikes and artillery bombardment against Taliban positions in Swat over the past few days. "This is why they keep losing."

Part of the problem is that the government isn't putting its best forces in the fight against the Taliban. They're sending paramilitary forces into the breach, rather than the regular army.

The government says that they're going to limit their offensive against the Taliban to Swat. That leaves the rest of the frontier provinces free for the same Taliban thugs to regroup for renewed conflict against both Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's a recipe for disaster, and yet this is how Pakistan's governments have operated for years on end - first under Pervez Musharaf, and now under Asif Ail Zardari.

Meanwhile, the US isn't going to sit back and wait for things to go from bad to worse. Covert airstrikes once again targeted Taliban/al Qaeda targets in South Waziristan, which is the main base for Baitullah Mehsud, who is the most organized and capable Taliban thug.

Mehsud's forces have managed to stymie Pakistani military forces for years, and the Pakistanis don't appear to have any answers to that mess.

Throw in the fact that the Taliban have fully manipulated the media to the point of where all civilian casualties are the fault of the US, NATO, Afghan forces, or Pakistani forces, and not the Taliban and al Qaeda who continue putting civilians into harm's way, and who hide in and among civilians. It's to the point where even Afghan President Karzai questions airstrikes and civilian casualties, despite the fact that it was the Taliban bringing those airstrikes down on civilians by hiding in and among those civilians.

The propaganda campaign continues, and the Pakistanis, Afghans, and US are still playing catchup to the Taliban. Claims that there were casualties that were the result of white phosphorus mimic those alleged against Israel in its battles with Hamas in Gaza or Hizbullah in South Lebanon. They're successful because the smear sticks, while the refutation takes far too long for anyone to care.