Intelligence sharing

[amy]

The meeting between Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the visiting US Central Command chief, Admiral William J Fallon, has produced some very positive developments as far as the meticulous equilibrium between the dictates of national sovereignty and the growing menace of religious militancy is concerned. According to the press reports, the COAS has informed the visiting official that only Pakistani forces will conduct any operation inside Pakistan while intelligence sharing on the Pak-Afghan border remains essential to any effective strategy for winning the war on terror in the region. Admiral Fallon, the top officer at the US Central Command, could not have been more correct when he observed that the war against terror could only be won with joint efforts of the allied forces. In this respect, reports say that the United States is planning to support a five-year programme to train and equip Pakistan’s paramilitary troops in combating the insurgency in the tribal regions, including the establishment of a training centre at Warsak, near Peshawar, also promise a lot of improvement in the situation. The perseverance of the military leadership of Pakistan in trusting the defence capabilities of the national armed forces and the resolve to protect national sovereignty are very laudable indeed. After all, the success of the US and allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has remained doubtful to date. They should not expect much in the difficult terrain, hostile populace and inclement conditions of northern Pakistan while the government of Pakistan will find it equally difficult to proffer fulsome support to the foreign troops in the face of mounting public fury. However, there are nuances to the larger question of terrorism that command deeper retrospection.

In this context, COAS General Kayani’s call for the need to “find out the root causes of terrorism and extremism” may have become irrelevant in the context of the evolution of the terrorist challenge over the years. It is obvious by now that the perpetrators of terrorism are not going to abandon their campaign short of a complete takeover of political power in Pakistan and other Muslim majority countries. That is why their charter of demands is highly fluid, vague and expedient. Similarly, it is ungainly to barter erstwhile territorial claims of the nation states on the pretext of terrorism. Such an approach is tantamount to legitimise terrorism by default besides providing the terrorist masterminds with a subterfuge to either garner public sympathies or at least offset the wave of public outrage at the indiscriminate carnage wrought by the acts of terrorism.

The spate of violent incidents inside Pakistan in recent months has persuaded Pakistan’s leadership to focus more intensively on extremist al-Qaeda hideouts near the border. However, the information-sharing needs must go beyond hideouts in the tribal areas. It is worth-remembering that most of the wanted al-Qaeda members were arrested from mainland Pakistan – Rawalpindi, Gujrat, Faisalabad and Karachi. While the US part of information is bound to be concentrated on either side of the Pakistan and Afghanistan border, the Pakistani side of intelligence needs to be concentrated on settled districts of Pakistan, defunct religious outfits, their re-christened versions, sectarian organisations and above all religio-political parties that have not only refrained from condemning terrorism but have actually left no stone unturned in rallying public support for the terrorism agenda by undermining the governmental efforts to combat terrorism. Only through a combination of internal purge and external coordination could the head of hydra of terrorism be scotched. In respect of intelligence sharing, the Afghan, NATO and Pakistan coordination mechanism needs to be spruced up, besides enhancing actionable intelligence cooperation with the US.


http://thepost.com.pk/EditorialNews....40583&catid=10