WASHINGTON, DC- U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a commentary in the Middle East Bulletin on the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and the lessons that could be applied to this region from the war in Iraq. The Middle East Bulletin is a journal affiliated with the Center for American Progress.
“There is a window of opportunity here to weaken and ultimately defeat Al Qaeda and Taliban elements in Pakistan’s tribal belt,” said Senator Casey. “We should seize it by applying the right historical lessons.”
Senator Casey visited Afghanistan and Pakistan in May. He has been an outspoken proponent of the need to refocus the war on terror with a renewed commitment to clean out the sanctuaries Al Qaeda and other extremists have taken along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The commentary is below and can be viewed at the following link: http://www.middleeastprogress.org/?page_id=3488&preview=true
Pakistan: Learning the Right Lessons from Iraq
by Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA), Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Original Commentary for Middle East Bulletin.
Deep in the heart of its tribal belt region bordering Afghanistan, the Pakistani military is turning to tribal militias known as lashkars to rout out militants that have taken sanctuary there. Pakistan’s Tribal Awakening strategy pins hopes on tribal leaders who have decided to join forces with the government rather than accommodate extremist elements who strike at Coalition forces operating across the border in Afghanistan. For some, it is akin to the successful Sunni Awakening strategy the United States employed in Iraq. There, the U.S. military worked with Sunni tribal chiefs in the al-Anbar province to switch allegiances from Al Qaeda. But Pakistan is not Iraq. While Pakistan’s tribal leaders will need to be included in any successful military strategy, parallels with Iraq’s Sunni Awakening are tenuous and overlook the unique challenges characterizing Pakistan’s tribal belt. It is important to learn the right lessons from this comparison.
Bowing to increased U.S. pressure, Pakistan has attempted to target extremist elements within its tribal belt, mostly situated in the northwestern part of the country. The Pakistani military has undertaken several incursions into the tribal areas, such as its offensives to rout the Taliban from Khyber and Bajaur agencies. The Frontier Corps, Pakistan’s paramilitary force responsible for maintaining order in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), has started receiving U.S. training to strengthen its counterinsurgency skills.
Ultimately though, the Pakistani military’s capability to win this war on its own is weak. The Pakistani military has a complex and opaque relationship with militants in the tribal belt, one that further complicates relationships with tribal leaders. While former President Pervez Musharraf publicly made a great show of going after the militants, privately, Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders have tolerated and even assisted the same militant groups.
Additionally, the Pakistani Army has lost every war it has fought, and it was never trained to fight counterinsurgencies or be deployed in the tribal areas. Since its first offensive against the Taliban, the Army has already lost more than 1,400 paramilitary and other soldiers, a grave sacrifice for that nation. The Frontier Corps lacks key resources and capacities and has faced criticism from U.S. officials, including General Dan McNeill, a previous commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. Islamabad’s political reach into the tribal areas has always been limited at best. Despite President Musharraf’s 2006-7 Comprehensive Approach in the FATA, limited security operations, combined with political overtures and development assistance, have yet to gain major traction.
Recognizing its limitations, the Pakistani military has appealed directly to tribal leaders for assistance. Native tribes have formed lashkars this year to work as localized forces assisting the military, especially in places like Bajaur where fighting has been the heaviest. Their emergence signifies both increasing frustrations among tribal leaders with the Taliban’s brutality and a strong desire to keep the Pakistani military at bay. Many hope the creation of these tribal forces will be the turning point in the fight against the extremists in Pakistan’s tribal belt, similar to Iraq’s Sunni Awakening. Applying the lessons of Iraq to Pakistan must be done with great care—the differences between the two countries are substantial.
To end attacks on its own military forces and buttress the failing Iraqi security forces, the United States turned to Sunni Awakening Councils in western Anbar province starting in 2006. Sunni tribal leaders had been feeling pressure from all sides, included being targeted by Shiite death squads, extremists linked to Al Qaeda, and U.S. military operations. The U.S. military paid members of the Awakening movements roughly $300 a month to guard checkpoints and buildings and to cease targeting American troops. Many U.S. officers credit the Sunni Awakening, and not the increase in U.S. troops, as the key turning point for decreasing violence in Iraq.
On the surface, the parallels between Iraq and Pakistan are striking. In both nations, the government security forces have been unable to crack down on extremists. Sunni tribal leaders in these countries play a key role in combating extremists and their cooperation is critical for any military success. But while the Iraqi paradigm offers relevant lessons for Pakistan, there are four key differences that should give us pause before rushing to replicate the model.
First, in Iraq, the United States worked directly with the tribes, whereas in Pakistan, the United States will need to work through Pakistani government institutions. Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq received direct support from the United States, including millions of dollars of U.S. government assistance and military support from the Third Infantry Division. In Pakistan, lashkars must rely on their own antiquated weapons and ammunition and receive inconsistent support from Pakistan’s military and government. Their Taliban enemies meanwhile boast of far superior weaponry, intelligence information and communications equipment.
Second, the tribal structures in Pakistan and the tribes’ motivations are vastly different from the ones that exist in Iraq. Unlike Iraq’s powerful Sunni tribes which remained resilient in the face of attacks by extremists, the Taliban greatly weakened the Pakistani tribal structure in recent years. In the last four years, as many as 500 pro-government tribal elders have been singled out and killed in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Due to this leadership vacuum, uneducated tribal youth have been lured by promises of good money and stature to the Taliban’s ranks. Moreover, Pakistan’s tribal groups have a more complicated relationship with the foreign militants than do Iraq’s tribes; some foreign militants have been present in Pakistan for decades, whereas in Iraq, the foreign militants that attacked Iraq’s tribes were a post-2003 phenomenon.
Third, Iraq’s internal violence was largely a struggle for power between competing factions, and Pakistan’s violence was largely part of a longer struggle to achieve order and stability in historically lawless parts of the country. By 2007, Iraq had been torn apart by sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing. The decision to ally with Sunni tribal leaders was a calculated move by the U.S. military to build an independent military power outside the Iraqi state that would decrease attacks on U.S. troops. This largely worked. In contrast, Pakistan’s war is not driven by sectarian differences over power but by fringe extremist elements trying to maintain a safe haven in the country’s tribal regions. With these extremist groups in Pakistan, there is little room for political negotiations, despite repeated failed attempts by the Pakistani government. The Pakistani military astutely remains leery of making the tribal leaders too strong, mindful of the way in which the Taliban first came to power.
This leads to the last major difference. Pakistan’s tribal leaders are not looking for an expanded political role in the central government. In Iraq from 2003 to 2006, some tribal leaders supported short-lived alliances of convenience with extremist groups as part of a broader Shia-Sunni power struggle and resistance to the U.S. troop presence. In contrast, Pakistani tribal calculations are not part of an effort to gain power or to increase their political involvement at the national level. The motives and potential points of leverage for Pakistan’s tribes differ significantly from their Iraqi counterparts.
Certainly, we cannot deny that Iraq’s Sunni Awakening offers some useful lessons for Pakistan. General David Petraeus, the former top U.S. military commander in Iraq and now the head of the U.S. Central Command, is uniquely positioned to adapt any successful Iraq strategies to the war in Afghanistan and its border region with Pakistan. Ultimately, Pakistan’s tribal leaders need to be integrated into any successful plan to defeat extremists.
To do so effectively, the United States must understand and exploit the cleavages among the different tribes and the various extremist groups. In essence, the United States should take the right lessons from Iraq and apply them to Pakistan, recognizing the serious differences between the two countries. It should not seek to replicate exactly what was done in Iraq; rather it should apply the right lessons from Iraq to a fundamentally different situation in Pakistan.
One key principle—and one reason for the decrease in violence in Iraq—is the recognition that the United States needs to have an integrated strategy that uses all components of power. A short-term and long-term political and economic strategy must accompany any military approach in the tribal belt as it has in Iraq. This is why I support the landmark Biden-Lugar bill tripling non-military U.S. aid to Pakistan and legislation establishing Reconstruction Opportunity Zones that would provide desperately needed economic support to the region.
For too long now, Pakistan’s tribal areas have been neglected by the Pakistani government and international community. As a result, they have become the safe haven for the most radical elements in the world. There is a window of opportunity here to weaken and ultimately defeat Al Qaeda and Taliban elements in Pakistan’s tribal belt. We should seize it by applying the right historical lessons.
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