Countering the Taliban Insurgency in Pakistan
Published: May 26, 2009
Originally appeared in Global Viewpoint, on the Illinois International web site
ACDIS Associate Director Matt Rosenstein discusses the current conflict between the Pakistani Army and the Taliban.
Dr. Matthew Rosenstein is Associate Director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS) at the University of Illinois, a position he has held since 2001. He also served as Acting Director of ACDIS from June 2007 to February 2008. Rosenstein’s current research interests include regional security of South Asia, and politics, political systems, and militancy in the region, especially in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. He has authored articles and op-eds and given interviews to local and international media on these topics. He has also edited several special journal issues and reports on South Asian security. Recent or forthcoming edited publications cover subjects such as the dispute over Kashmir; NATO’s mission in Afghanistan; and nuclear weapons in South Asia. From 2001-2005, Rosenstein managed institutional grants to ACDIS from the Ford Foundation and National Security Education Program, which involved extensive collaboration with scholars from the region. He holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the University of Illinois, and a B.A. from Duke University. Here, he discusses the conflict between the Pakistani Army and Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley.
Since the Taliban was driven from leadership in Afghanistan, it has largely been seen by Americans as irrelevant to the war effort in the region. What has been the root cause of the recent Taliban resurgence?
The Taliban resurgence can be attributed to several factors. After the U.S. unseated the Taliban regime in Kabul following 9/11, the porous border and mountainous terrain allowed some Taliban to travel from Afghanistan to Pakistan unimpeded. Today, the conglomeration of local and foreign militants, radical clerics, and tribal members in Pakistan being referred to as the Taliban are well-armed, well-trained, and well-financed. The United Nations (UN) estimates the Taliban’s profits at $400 million per year from opium trade. Monetary support from foreign sympathizers has also undoubtedly played a role in their gathering strength.
The Taliban have several charismatic leaders, such as Sufi Mohammad and Baitullah Mehsud, who have been able to consolidate their power in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan through intimidation of locals but also savvy recruitment to their cause, in particular leveraging resentment of the United States and the weak and ineffective—if not corrupt—regimes of Pervez Musharraf and later Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan and Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. One such leader in Swat Valley, Maulana Fazlullah, who earned the nickname “Radio Mullah” from the Pakistani press by broadcasting his sermons to millions through an illegal FM channel, exemplifies the creative ways that pro-Taliban forces have been able to spread their influence. Additionally, U.S. preoccupation until recently with Iraq—where, typically, on the order of four to five times more U.S. troops have been deployed when compared with Afghanistan—cannot be ignored as a factor.
In short, the Taliban have been able to build up their numbers and resources in historically ungovernable outlying regions of Pakistan during a period of transition and weak governance in the country’s administrative center, while an insufficient commitment from either Pakistan or the United States did little to counter the growing problem.
The
United States, along with NATO, has played a central role in the War in
Afghanistan. However, the U.S. has denied any attacks have occurred
across the border in Pakistan. What has been the official position of
the U.S. to the fighting in Pakistan, and why have some suggested that
the U.S. may be playing a larger military role than it has indicated?
The United States does not want to admit to carrying out military operations on the sovereign territory of another country, much less a strategically important ally. It also must be careful not to undermine the fledgling Pakistani civilian democratic government. However, no one is really buying the notion that the U.S. has not been active in carrying out attacks. Reports of unmanned aerial drone strikes by the CIA have been relatively frequent and highly publicized in the Pakistani press for several years now, and developed into a particular source of tension between Islamabad and Washington. There have also reportedly been ground incursions by US special forces, along with stories broken in U.S. newspapers of U.S. presidential approval for covert operations to counter the growing threat to stability not only in Afghanistan but also Pakistan from Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives.
The Pakistani civilian and military leadership have repeatedly demanded a stop to the drone attacks and incursions by the U.S. In turn, the U.S. diplomatic arm has been pressuring Pakistan to take on greater responsibility for the war effort within its own borders.
The
Taliban insurgency has reached to within 60 miles of the Pakistani
capital, Islamabad. How legitimate is the threat created by these
forces? Is there a real danger of the Taliban taking control of
Pakistani nuclear weapons?
It is perhaps overly alarmist to paint the Taliban insurgency alone as a direct threat to the continued existence of the Pakistani government, but there is no doubt it already has and can continue to do much damage. Prior to the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan, suicide bombings were virtually unknown in Pakistan; now they occur in major seats of economic and political power such as Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi on a regular basis at great cost in terms of loss of life, infrastructural damage, and depletion of confidence in Pakistani government and security forces to combat the phenomenon.
As for scenarios whereby the Taliban gets a hold of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons or at least small quantities of highly enriched uranium or weapons-grade plutonium to cause harm, it is difficult to assess just how great the threat really is. The Pakistani political and military leadership assure the international community that steps they have taken to safeguard nuclear materials—dispersing component parts of nuclear weapons, refining command and control structures, acquiring additional training from the U.S. for personnel in its Strategic Plans Division responsible for nuclear weapons security—are enough. But the revelations in 2004 of extensive black market smuggling by a senior nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, is one of many reasons to worry about “loose nukes.” Whether the Taliban or al-Qaeda has insiders within the military, intelligence agencies, or nuclear weapons infrastructure, as some fear, cannot easily be determined.
Whatever the case, such questions are very much on the minds of people in both Washington and Islamabad, and recent assessments by analysts and journalists that Pakistan is ramping up its nuclear weapons production even today certainly does not allay concerns.
The
government of Pakistan just launched a massive offensive in Swat Valley
in the hopes of squashing the insurgency. Why has Pakistan been
incapable of an effective counterinsurgency thus far? Do you see the
current offensive working?
A major reason behind Pakistan’s previous counterinsurgency failures has been the weakness of the successive governments. Also, the Pakistani military has maintained high troop deployments along the Line of Control, the country’s de facto border with rival India, to the detriment of the counterinsurgency effort. Beyond these factors, Pakistan has faced the usual set of challenges that confront many counterinsurgency operations, such as terrain that reduces technological advantages of one side, the ability of enemy combatants to blend into civilian populations, and so forth. Additionally, the Pakistani Army has suffered from low morale from being asked to train their guns on fellow Muslims and fellow Pakistanis. Moreover, until very recently, public opinion in Pakistan was not behind the war, largely perceiving it as a U.S.-imposed conflict despite efforts by President Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to assert that it is “our [Pakistan’s] war.”
Mixed signals from Islamabad, such as multiple peace deals with Swat militants, emboldened rather than placated the insurgents. The current climate suggests that this offensive has as good a chance of success as at any time since the conflict began. There are signs that public opinion has turned, with polls now indicating that nearly 70 percent of Pakistanis consider the Taliban presence in the country problematic. A widely circulated video of Taliban beating a young women, and fatigue of civil society with the suicide attacks, have contributed to the shift. On the other hand, if the offensive stalls and the violence is prolonged, Pakistani civil society could grow impatient. The estimated millions of refugees fleeing the fighting could cast the government in a very negative light, especially if blame for the internal displacement gets placed at the feet of the U.S. or Pakistani governments rather than the Taliban.
The success of the current offensive, in other words, is far from assured.