An American analyst has said that U.S. Special Forces will be ineffective in neutralising remnants of al Qaeda and Taleban in Pakistans border areas, should the Bush Administration think of sending them in.
New York, Aug.14 : An American analyst has said that U.S. Special Forces will be ineffective in neutralising remnants of al Qaeda and Taleban in Pakistan's border areas, should the Bush Administration think of sending them in.
According to a Boston Globe report, though newspapers and television channels in the US are discussing what form of military action to take in Pakistan, the debate has shifted from questions of "whether or not to attack" to " what kind of flushing out procedures" should be adopted, "what will be the casualties" and "how long will such an operation take".
"The idea of Navy Seals, CIA, or Special Forces operating in some of the most remote and desolate territory on earth without benefit of local knowledge or Pakistani help would be counter-productive in the extreme," claims H.D.S. Greenway in his article for the Boston Globe.
He further goes on to say that the "American way of war depends on massive firepower from the air, not the determined, loss-inflicting, village-to-village way that is necessary in irregular warfare."
The article says that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's attempt to buy peace and loyalty in the country's northwest frontier has backfired, and Al Qaeda has been a key beneficiary.
Frances Townsend, Bush's Homeland Security adviser, has admitted that "It hasn't worked for Pakistan, and it hasn't worked for the United States," and in the light of these conclusions and the number of civilian deaths being inflicted in neighboring Afghanistan by American and NATO forces, Washington would be wise in not having a repeat of the same in Pakistan, says Greenway.
"When the tipping point arrives, all our efforts in Afghanistan are doomed. To repeat this in Pakistan would be a strategic blunder on the scale of Iraq. result of American armed intervention in Pakistan could be the dissolution of Pakistan itself," he warns.
History, he says, has repeatedly shown that the tribal-dominated borderlands in Afghanistan, Balochistan, and the Northwest Frontier Province have rarely been tamed.
"The British had constant problems in the border regions during their tenure, with armed rebellions in Waziristan till as late as the 1930s. The strange arrangement of the tribal territories, which are not completely under the government's control, are a legacy of those times when the British tried to buy peace on the frontier," he adds.
The frontier territories have always been deeply religious, and this is something that Washington and Islamabad would have to contend with in order to buy peace and ensure stability in a largely volatile region, says Greenway.
"He (Musharraf) has to tread carefully, as the tribal nationalism of the frontier is interwoven with Islamism, much of it extreme. His previous attempts at military intervention have been even less successful than his try for a truce. The political ramifications of a full-scale revolt on the frontier would be, for Pakistan, far worse than Al Qaeda's presence. Such an event would be worse for America too," he warns.
ANI