Daily Times Editorial Dec 1, 2013

Challenges for new COAS The baton of command of the Pakistan army was ceremonially passed from outgoing COAS General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to new incumbent and the 15th COAS General Raheel Sharif on Friday. With it ended General Kayani’s long 44-year career in the army, which saw him occupy some of the highest positions, including as head of ISI, before taking over as COAS from General Pervez Musharraf in 2007 and receiving an extension of three years in 2010. General Kayani in his farewell address at the handover ceremony in Islamabad reiterated that the armed forces were fully prepared to thwart both internal and external threats. He said the high spirit, sacrifices and martyrs of the army in the struggle against terrorism was a golden chapter in the country’s history, and the martyrs in particular were the benefactors of the country (an indirect rebuttal of Jamaat-i-Islami chief Munawwar Hasan’s statement declaring army men killed in the struggle against terrorism as just 'casualties' and not martyrs). General Kayani’s tenure as COAS saw some remarkable and important developments and his legacy may be debated for years to come. However, what can be stated at this hour of his bowing out is that by and large, General Kayani will be remembered as a military commander who kept the army out of politics and was in office when the first historic democratic transition in Pakistan’s history from one elected government to another took place. He will also be recalled as the first COAS to define the paradigm shift in the military’s mission from one of predominantly guarding the country’s borders to one of combating the internal threat posed by terrorism. The fact that this paradigm shift did not see entirely satisfactory results on the ground in the struggle against the terrorists may owe less to lack of intent and more to the inherent inertia that challenges changes in policy in such large organisations, despite the legendary discipline of the armed forces. In other words, the translation of a conceptual change to operational shifts on the ground is never an easy nor trouble-free transition, especially when faced by an elusive and tough battle hardened enemy. The shifting lines of alliance and conflict in the grey and murky area of jihadi proxies in the shadow of 9/11 and the subsequent invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by western forces led to inevitable gaps and weaknesses in intelligence and operational efficacy, notwithstanding the outstanding successes of the military operations in Swat (almost unqualified success) and South Waziristan (not so unqualified). In these two success stories, while the surviving Taliban in Swat fled under Mullah Fazlullah into Afghanistan, in the latter case they simply shifted into the even denser hornet’s nest of North Waziristan, where they continue to be based till today. In fact these operations point to two incontestable lessons from the guerrilla wars in Pakistan and in the world in recent times. One, the approach to the campaign in FATA has suffered not only from the overhang of the so-called ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban misconception, it has also failed to achieve the desired results because of a piecemeal strategy of attacking Taliban groups Agency by Agency, thereby allowing the guerrillas to move away in classic fashion into adjoining, safer Agencies or over the porous border into Afghanistan. Two, the history of guerrilla wars in recent times in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, to take two examples that ended in diametrically opposite denouements, indicates that modern armies are able to eventually overwhelm guerrilla movements with their incredibly enhanced firepower and technical capability if such movements have no external safe havens to retreat into to regroup and whenever threatened. Afghanistan is a case of a guerrilla movement that remains undefeated because of the external safe havens factor, while the Tamil struggle in Sri Lanka arguably had no answer to a determined assault on its internal bases with nowhere to retreat to. Amidst other challenges, the main one facing the new COAS is the struggle against terrorism which, if the above analysis is valid, requires a reformulation of the strategy in FATA to treat the area as a theatre whole rather than a piecemeal approach as in the past in order to have some chance of encirclement of the guerillas and cutting off their avenues of retreat. Second, the new COAS will seriously have to tackle the intelligence weaknesses in the counter-terrorism campaign (a largely urban phenomenon) since such operations are inherently intelligence-led, police operations rather than the big guns of the regular military. General Sharif brings to the task operational, conceptual and training and preparatory experience that eminently makes him the right person for the job. The entire country joins us in wishing him every success.