by Peter R. Mansoor via Strategika
For much of its short seventy-year history, Pakistan has managed to thoroughly mismanage its strategic relationships with great power patrons, regional competitors, and non-state clients. It has waged and lost four wars with a larger and more powerful India, supported terrorist organizations that have destabilized Afghanistan and conducted deadly attacks in neighboring India, and alienated its long-time American ally.
Between June 2014 and May 2016, the Pakistani army launched operation Zarb-e-Azb, literally translated as “swift and conclusive strike,” which focused on clearing terrorist organizations—including Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Haqqani network—from the region.
Today, Pakistani government and military officials contend that the entire FATA has been secured under army control and that the priority has shifted to rebuilding and developing the FATA region…despite claims from Washington that Pakistan continues to harbor terrorist groups.
Below are two perspectives on this offered to The Cipher Brief – from top Pakistani officials, and a former CIA officer, with comments adapted for print from their conversations.
- Lt. Gen. (ret.) Nasser Khan Janjua, National Security Advisor, Government of Pakistan: “In the FATA there were areas that were under the full control of terrorists, there were areas where control was contested, and there were areas that were under government control. Gradually, with all of the efforts these were reduced. And then we had to conduct the world’s largest operation, known as Zarb-e Azb. As of today, we have cleared all areas. TTP has run away to Afghanistan where they find safe havens and sanctuaries, where they are hosted and they are used against Pakistan.”
- Kevin Hulbert, former CIA station chief: “The Pakistan military has been undertaking operations in the FATA for about 15 years, since they first went into the Shkai Valley in 2004 and attacked militants and held territory…What the U.S. has always pushed for is more of a sustained effort that removed the FATA from being a place where militants find safe harbor where they can rest, recuperate, organize, train, and launch cross border attacks against U.S. and coalition fighters in Afghanistan. To date, the Pakistan government has proven unwilling, or incapable of bringing the FATA more under the control of the central government in Islamabad and the reality is that it might be more of the latter as a problem then the former. That is, they are more incapable than they are unwilling.”