Making it stick

The army has done a great job, but now it is up to the civilian govt to make the peace both work and above all — stick

The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Raheel Sharif, has been visiting the troops fighting on the frontline in Tirah valley. He has repeated the statement that terrorists would not be allowed to stage a comeback to the area, and further that the ongoing battle against militancy would be taken to its “logical conclusion” across the entire country and not only in the tribal areas. He was careful to thank what he called “the tribal brethren” for their support in evicting the militants from the tribal region. The COAS said that the goal was “ultimate peace” and in that there would be few that would disagree with him.

Defeating terrorism and militancy is a multi-faceted task and it cannot be achieved by military means alone. The army has faced hard fighting in Operation Zarb-e-Azb, up against well-equipped and experienced mountain fighters who have operated in the area for years and are skilled in all the wiles of asymmetric warfare. Many will have crossed into Afghanistan and will seek to return at the earliest opportunity to continue in their mission to overthrow the Pakistan state. It would be a dangerous mistake to consider them defeated because they most assuredly are not. It will be recalled that the pacification of the Swat valley once it was wrested from Taliban control was no easy matter, and Swat in relative terms was considerably better served in terms of infrastructure and development investment than are the tribal areas. The tribal areas have in large part been de-populated of civilians, and there is a plan for their phased return which is hedged around with some stringent caveats that are unlikely to win hearts and minds among tribal communities. An angry population is going to return to find homes and livelihoods destroyed, and what infrastructure there was in terms of schools and health services — in ruins across all seven tribal agencies. The army has done a great job, but it is reaching the limit of its mandate and it is going to be up to the civilian government to make the peace both work and above all — stick.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 10^th,  2015.

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