Pakistan aims for an Awakening

The Pakistani government has taken a new step in asserting itself in the lawless tribal regions on its border with Afghanistan.  They have armed anti-Taliban tribal fighters, known as lashkars, with AK-47s and given them free rein to conduct operations against the Islamist radicals.  The Gilani government in Islamabad wants to emulate the Awakening movement in Iraq by building a grassroots effort against terrorism:

Pakistan plans to arm tens of thousands of anti-Taliban tribal fighters in its western border region in hopes — shared by the U.S. military — that the nascent militias can replicate the tribal “Awakening” movement that proved decisive in the battle against al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The militias, called lashkars, will receive Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles and other small arms, a purchase arranged during a visit to Beijing this month by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistani officials said.

Many Bush administration officials remain skeptical of Pakistan’s long-term commitment to fighting the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other extremist groups ensconced in the mountains near the border with Afghanistan. But the decision to arm the lashkars, which emerged as organized fighting forces only in the past few months, is one of several recent actions that have led the Pentagon to believe that the Pakistani effort has become more aggressive.

Undoubtedly, this will help in the federally-administered tribal areas (FATAs) like the Waziristans and the NWFP.  The lashkars already have almost 30,000 men ready to fight, and the Taliban has already taken notice of them.  They have begun to conduct suicide operations against the lashkars and have beheaded eight of them in the last few weeks.  Until now, the lashkars used old weapons with little firepower, but the AK-47s will help close the firepower gap with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

There are some significant differences between Iraq and Pakistan on this issue, though.  The central government has almost no presence in the FATAs, and the tribal mix is more complicated.  In Iraq, most of the destruction came from outsiders brought into the Sunni areas by AQ, whereas in Pakistan, most of the combatants are natives.  This Awakening will look less like a grassroots police action than a civil war, or perhaps more accurately, a tribal war pitting Pashtuns against everyone else in the region.

Pakistan needs to assert its sovereignty in the FATAs if it hopes to end the fighting, and not just militarily.  People in the FATAs have grave concerns about food and infrastructure security, which tends to create more radicals.  Unfortunately, as in Afghanistan, this becomes a vicious-cycle problem, because one cannot build food security and infrastructure while radicals target everything in sight, and the lack of food security creates more radicals.

In Iraq, we broke the cycle by putting a dominant military presence on the ground.  Pakistan eventually will have to do the same thing, or have someone else do it for them.  Given the mountainous terrain and the isolation of the tribes in these regions, that’s going to be a very difficult proposition.  Until then, perhaps the lashkars can get lucky and take out the Taliban/AQ leadership by reaching where government troops cannot.  A similar strategy worked for us in 2001 with the Northern Alliance.