Twenty-seven persons--13 of them members of Pakistan's Frontier Corps,including a Major-- are reported to have been killed in an air strike by US AirForce planes on a check post of the FC located near the Pakistan-Afghanistanborder in the Gora Parao area in the Mohmand agency of theFederally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan on the night of June 10,2008.
While a Pakistani army spokesman has condemned the US attack as cowardly andunprovoked, Pentagon spokesmen in Washington DC, while not denying the attack,have justified it as a legitimate act of self-defence.
The check post attacked by US planes was manned by the Mohmand Rifles, a unit ofthe FC, which consists mainly of local recruits. The Mohmand Agency is one ofthe preferred infiltration routes of the Neo Taliban of Afghanistan headed byMulla Mohammad Omar and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) headed by BaitullahMehsud of South Waziristan. In recent months, tribesmen from Mohmand Agency hadalso repeatedly attacked trucks transporting logistic supplies for the NATOforces in Afghanistan from the Karachi port.
Pakistani media accounts as well as reports from independent police sourcesindicate that the incident was provoked by a joint attack launched by the NeoTaliban and the TTP on a recently-opened post of the Afghan National Army (ANA)in Afghan territory just across the Gora Parao check post of the FC. When theANA soldiers were outnumbered and outmanoeuvred by the Taliban attacks from thePakistani territory, they sought the assistance of US troops. When the ANA andthe US troops faced difficulty in countering the Taliban forces, who weresupported by cover fire from Pakistani territory, they asked for air support. USplanes then bombed the area in the vicinity of the FC check post. The air attackkilled a number of Taliban cadres, but at the same time, it also destroyed theFC check post.
The incident once again underlined the difficulty faced by the ANA and the UStroops in countering Taliban intrusions from Pakistani territory. Theseintrusions often take place through areas manned by the FC. The FC consistsalmost completely of tribals recruited locally, though some officers do come ondeputation from non-tribal areas too.
While senior officers of the Pentagon and the State Department refrain fromcriticising the FC of complicity with the Neo Taliban and the TTP, US and Afghansoldiers in Afghanistan do not make any secret of their conviction that there isconsiderable sympathy for the Taliban among the tribal members of the FC andthat they often facilitate infiltrations by the Taliban into Afghan territory. Arecent report of the Rand Corporation of the US, which highlights the collusionof many serving and retired Pakistani personnel--from the Army as well as theFC-- with the Taliban largely reflects this conviction of the Afghanistan-basedUS troops. The US soldiers and their officers in Afghanistan considerretaliatory attacks on FC personnel and check posts aiding the Taliban as alegitimate exercise of their right of self-defence for which they require noclearance from Washington DC.
The fact that the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) of the Swat Valleyof the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the TTP have been demanding thatany peace agreement with the Government should provide for the withdrawal of thePakistani Army troops from the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan andtheir replacement by FC personnel reflects their confidence that the FCpersonnel will be more friendly to the Taliban.
The US faces a dilemma in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region. The FC's tribalrecruits, with their considerable local knowledge, can be an asset in theoperations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, provided they co-operate sincerely.At the same time, their sympathy for fellow-tribals serving in the Taliban comesin the way of such sincere co-operation and reduces their reliability. It hasnot so far found a way out of this dilemma. Its plans for a modernisation of theFC are unlikely to produce results so long as this sympathy for the Talibanamong the recruits to the FC persists.
One way out of this dilemma could be by using the FC units for internal securityduties in other parts of Pakistan and using regular Pakistan army unitsconsisting of non-tribal soldiers for counter-terrorism and counter-insurgencyduties in the FATA. This is already being attempted for sometime now, but theregular army units, who were raised and trained essentially for duties on theIndian border, find themselves ill-adapted for duties in the tribal belt nearthe Afghan border.
Though Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), hasreportedly been talking of the need to retrain the Pakistani army troops forcounter-terrorist and counter-insurgency duties in the tribal belt, he has nottaken any action to implement his idea because the Pakistan Army gives moreimportance to its role against India than to its role against Al Qaeda and theTaliban.
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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies,Chennai.
