Lions and Jackals
Pakistan’s Emerging Counterinsurgency Strategy
Article Summary and Author Biography
The Pakistani military's new counterinsurgency strategy is propelling it to victory against the Taliban. But to consolidate its gains, Pakistan will need international support.
HAIDER ALI HUSSEIN MULLICK is Senior Fellow at the U.S. Joint Special Operations University, Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and the author of the forthcoming book Pakistan’s Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies.
Reading List
An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on fighting insurgencies.
Postscript
Conventional wars are won by capturing territory, but counterinsurgencies are won by holding it. Rather than rushing to open new fronts against the Taliban, Pakistan must now focus on keeping the territory it has already cleared.
Two months ago, the Taliban were 60 miles from the capital of nuclear-armed Pakistan. Four weeks later, the Pakistani military, using helicopter gunships, fighter jets, and special forces, destroyed Taliban strongholds, pushing them north -- and nearly three million refugees south -- out of the Swat Valley. Behind the operation's success lies a new hybrid counterinsurgency strategy that is emerging in Pakistan -- the strengths and weaknesses of which will be crucial for both Islamabad and Washington over the long term.
The new approach emerged from dissatisfaction with the Pakistani army's previous half-hearted struggles against the Taliban. Up through the summer of 2008, officers had been relying on the military's typical strategy of "out-terrorizing the terrorist," but the model was flawed. The army would do an excellent job of clearing Taliban-held areas but was reluctant to maintain a presence in them afterward. Generally, it preferred to pull back to its bases and outsource post-conflict security to inept local police and politicians. But resident forces were typically unable to provide security, and the government would often negotiate with the local Taliban, granting them asylum and allowing them to return.
This usually ignited a vicious cycle of blow up, patch up, and blow up. The worst part of the cyclical violence, according to a senior army official, was "the corrosion of troop morale," especially when officers were referred to as "America's mercenaries." Junior officers were suffering from battle fatigue, unwilling to continue fighting an unpopular war against their own people with no conclusive victory...
