#pakistan’s army battles enemy within #terrorism #jihad #Islam

The Pakistan military is under attack: from militants who fight full-scale battles daily with its troops; from a US administration suspicious about its loyalties; and most alarmingly from within, where there is growing evidence of dissent and radicalisation in its ranks.

In the days that followed the killing of Osama bin Laden by US forces, one of the most urgent tasks for General Ashfaq Kayani, head of the Pakistan military, was to address restive garrisons in Rawalpindi, Sialkot and Kharian. There he was confronted by officers outraged not at the discovery of the al-Qaeda leader in the country but at the audacity of the US in trampling Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Gen Kayani and his intelligence chief, General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who heads the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, have so far weathered the storm unleashed by the US operation. But the cost has been the weakening of their leadership.

Once a symbol of national unity, the army now appears divided over the fight against Islamist extremists, while the bin Laden killing and a high-profile Taliban attack on a naval air base in Karachi have left Pakistanis wondering whether the military is at war with itself as much as with militants in its border regions.

A former official close to General Pervez Musharraf, the former ruler, says some in the officer corps are still unable to accept that the jihadists they supported during the 1980s and 1990s against the Soviet Union and India are now terrorists to be hunted down. “Inside, among the lower ranking officers there is a view that [the militants] are fighting the Americans in the same way that they did the Soviets,” he says.

Last month’s attack on a naval base in Karachi, which saw six Taliban militants hold off security forces for more than 16 hours and kill a dozen naval personnel, has caused particular alarm. One naval officer says the attackers knew the base “inside out” and were likely to have received intelligence on the US-supplied aircraft and the presence of US and Chinese technicians.

“We don’t need to look for enemies outside our borders,” says Tanvirr Ahmed, a retired rear-admiral. “We have plenty within”.

Gen Kayani, while acknowledging Pakistan's internal issues are of the utmost importance, gives short-shrift to the army's detractors. “Some quarters . . . were trying to deliberately run down the armed forces, and the army in particular,” he said after meeting senior commanders on Friday. “This is an effort to drive a wedge between the army, different organs of the state and, more seriously, the people of Pakistan.”

The US has long worried that Pakistan’s 500,000-strong army has become radicalised and is unable to shake off the allegiances with extremist militant groups that it forged over the last three decades in its efforts to destabilise Afghanistan and India.

A trail of US diplomatic cables, released by WikiLeaks, reflects the reasons for the unease.

In 2006 US diplomats relayed the complaints of a Pakistan air force commander about the failure to persuade pilots to shave off their full beards, a mark of Islamic observance. He also claimed that air crews regularly sabotaged US-supplied F-16s to prevent them flying missions close to the border with Afghanistan.

Khalid Chaudhry, former air vice marshal, received “monthly reports of acts of petty sabotage, which he interpreted as an effort by extremists among the enlisted ranks to prevent PAF aircraft from being deployed”, the cable said. Other cables reflect a high level of anti-Americanism at senior levels.

Misgivings about the conduct of the military are shared by Pakistani security analysts, former officials and parliamentarians. They view the 40 militant attacks against military installations across Pakistan over the past three years as a sign of mutiny, where assaults are assisted by insiders.

They also detect divisions within the military along geographic, religious, generational and strategic lines. The former Musharraf official says many army officers remain furious about Pakistan’s decision to join the US in the fight against terror in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks.

Some disillusioned officers have left the army to found militant-friendly old officers’ associations. Others have joined the militants while some work from within.

One former parliamentarian says the army’s traditions have become so entwined with religious dogma and obeisance over the last 30 years that they are almost indistinguishable from those of the militants. “Today it is not enough to die for one’s country. Rather a soldier has to achieve martyrdom for Islam,” says the parliamentarian.

“The armed forces must consider some radical steps such as a complete ban on any contact between their own [organisations] and religious groups,” says Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military historian.

Publicly expressing these fears is dangerous. Syed Saleem Shahzad, a journalist, courted controversy by writing that Taliban and al-Qaeda militants had taken a strategic decision to destabilise the army and had deeply infiltrated its ranks. He was murdered three weeks ago.

In spite of strains, Gen Kayani has won praise from Washington for leading offensives against militants and regained public respect after Gen Musharraf lost it in his bid to cling to power. In July last year he and Gen Pasha were awarded extensions in office.

Now Gen Kayani faces pressure from the US to launch a fresh offensive on militants in North Waziristan, an area already pummelled by unpopular US drone attacks. Whether he can talk his garrisons into battling on another front is an open question.