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The type of war being fought in the frontiers is not our war: Asad Durrani

Since 9/11, Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province have been the frontline in the U.S.-backed “war on terror.” But the Pakistan Army, which has deployed more than 80,000 troops in the region, finds itself caught in a quagmire that is getting deeper by the day. The U.S. believes Pakistan can fight this war more effectively if moderate political forces in Pakistan join hands. For this reason it has backed a “marriage of convenience” between President Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, who leads Pakistan’s most moderate and largest political party, the Pakistan People’s Party. Several influential voices in the country believe Pakistan’s priority should be not to fight this war, but to disentangle itself from it, and restore peace in the region by talking to the Taliban or pro-Taliban militants. Lt. Gen (retd.) Asad Durrani, who headed Pakistan’s Military Intelligence and Inter-Services Intelligence in the late 1980s as the Soviets were winding down in Afghanistan, says there is no other way out. Excerpts from an interview:

I do not know all the details of how it happened. Even if there was some carelessness on the part of the troops, I find it a little strange that the army chief — the President — could mention that. But about one thing I have no doubt in my mind that the troops who are fighting there for the last four years are not fighting this as their war. They believe like I believe that we’ve been pushed into this war, fighting against out own people. And that becomes for the soldier such a huge challenge — fighting against your own people, civilians, citizens, women, children.

I still have to find out a version that is 100 per cent authentic. [The abducted soldiers could have] made an arrangement with the other side that we don’t have to kill each other. Or since they were not very willing fighters, they were careless. Or a third [possibility], I’m not ruling it out — the other side laid such a fine ambush [that there was no option but] to surrender. My own understanding is that it was the first. The [soldiers] who belong to those areas would in any case be reluctant. Even those who do not belong to that area but do belong to another tribe, they have one more reason for not fighting and that is because now they can fight and get away with it for the time being, but the tribal rivalries will lead to tribal warfare for the next 100 years. So either way the security forces have a big disadvantage.

That is where my problem occurs. You may be well-trained, well-equipped, well-led, and all the rest of it, but if you think it is not your war, then you would not fight it the way it has to be fought. The fine distinction that I want to make is that it is not demoralised in the normal sense in which people understand morale. The same army, the same people are still capable of fighting a conventional war against a conventional enemy with the right morale and the right spirit. But the moment you pick up weapons against your own people, it is not the morale that counts so much. It is your commitment to that fight, it is your reluctance to fire. Even though you can fire and kill people, you don’t want to.

If the [war] is going to be fought this way, it would be unwinnable. Even though militarily you may overwhelm that area in the short-term, there is no doubt in our mind that for the next many, many years, decades, it would not be pacified.

The problems there would continue, and the problems in the neighbouring settled areas would continue.

I have heard this argument before [that the peace agreements have not worked]. [War] has not worked for the last four years. The peace talks and the jirga process will not produce results in a couple of weeks or a couple of months because of the complexity of the situation. There is firing from across the border, the Americans bomb the area. The [American] demands sometimes are: no movement across the Durand Line. Impossible. It cannot be stopped. The [peace agreement] has to be continuously watched and refined, and people have to show plenty more patience. This war has to be won the traditional way — [get] jirgas involved, and they work continuously over a long, long time. More patience, and, of course, plenty of reconciliation. That is how it has to be done. That is how it was done when the British fought the tribesmen for 90 years.

It’s not just me who is saying this, it’s many people. The big principle is that when you are confronted with an enemy or adversary like the Taliban, like the IRA, like the PLO, like the Hurriyat in Kashmir, like the LTTE in Sri Lanka, ultimately you always end up talking to the other side. To start with, you may have refused to talk to them because they are terrorists, secessionists, they have demands you cannot meet. Ultimately, two things happen. You find out those people also have a reasonable following, and that once you start talking to them, you find out their demands may not be unreasonable. In this particular case, all that these people are going to ask us, whether they are in our tribal area or in Afghanistan, is stop the military operations. That’s a very reasonable demand.

I took part in the [BBC-sponsored] Doha debate two months ago, and when some of us said the time has come to talk to Al-Qaeda, two-thirds of the audience present — 500 to 600 people, clued-up people — supported us. Even if the apprehension is that these are the people who give sanctuaries to Al-Qaeda, and we want them to stop doing it, again we will have to get to that objective by talking to the Taliban or the militants who might be giving sanctuaries to them. I am saying ‘might” [because] I don’t believe that people who are talking about Al-Qaeda know exactly what this organisation is, and what type of people are getting these sanctuaries.

My own assessment is that anyone we do not like in our tribal areas, we call them Taliban. Those opposed to negotiations would come up with [reasons] like Al-Qaeda being present. This is the old habit of refusing to do certain things and the pretext is anything you can find — in this case it is Al-Qaeda. The old English saying, give the dog a bad name before you kill it, that fits in so very well here.

But let me assume there are Al Qaeda elements and we don’t want them. We again will have to come to an arrangement with the locals who may be providing them sanctuary.

The type of war that is being fought in the frontiers is not our war. If this is a war of ideas, then it can only be fought with better ideas, a more inclusive approach [to get back] those people who are attracted towards [Islamist militants] or embrace them.

So the negotiating track would help much more than the use of military instruments.

By “talibanisation” if we mean extremism, that some of the hardline maulvis are trying to implement their agenda, I am not suggesting that once the [fighting] stops, everything would get back to normal. It would take a long time, depending upon how we handle that situation later on. The culture of the tribal areas or that of the country is such an old one that the events of the last four or five years is not going to radically change it. It may bring about a little strengthening of certain forces, that I will not deny. But the mainstream of the tribal area, the mainstream of this part of the world has remained like it has for the last hundreds of years.

The first challenge will be, once he becomes the master of his own house, how now to disengage the army firstly from politics, or try and combat that image that people in Pakistan have that the army is deeply in politics, deeply in administration.

The other is how to extricate the troops from the tribal area, how to bring this to an end.

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