US to train Pakistan troops hunting militants Randeep Ramesh, South Asia correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday March 3 2008
The United States will send dozens of military advisers to Pakistan to train soldiers who are fighting extremist groups in the country's restive tribal areas, it emerged today, the first meaningful deployment of American troops in the country.
After weeks of negotiations between the US and Pakistan's new army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, a squad of American trainers will arrive later this year to teach soldiers how to handle counter insurgency operations, rather than a conventional land war against India.
The trainers will focus on the Frontier Corps, a force of about 8,500 soldiers, drawn from tribal groups along the Afghan border. The majority of the Pakistani army comes from Punjab and is often regarded as a "foreign force" in the border region, which is dominated by Pashtuns.
Although the original plan sees a deployment that stretches until 2015, the current forecast is that the trainers will be in Pakistan for up to two years. Initially the US military advisers would not be allowed out of their training camps. However, a widely discussed 40-page memo circulating in Washington eventually sees US troops accompanying Pakistani soldiers on missions against the militants.
Pakistan has resisted the direct involvement of US troops inside the country, aware that it risks a stinging backlash from a public which sees troops taking the battle to their own people. Analysts warned today that the Americans had consistently failed to read the public mood in the country and such a measure would exacerbate anti-US feelings.
"They are making a big mistake. With the Frontier Corps they are going to put people to fight against their kith and kin. It will create a greater problem," said General Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's spy agency.
"We need to sit down and talk to these people, they are our own. If we continue to fight a proxy war for the Americans we will end up with civil war or a revolution like they had in Iran."
The New York Times reported that the United States could spend more than $400m in the next several years to enhance the Frontier Corps, including building a training base near Peshawar. Some defence experts suggested that the incoming government needed to gain "ownership" of the army strategy.
"We welcome the money and the technology but there is a strong anti-American sentiment in Pakistan," said Talat Masood, a defence analyst and former army general.
"We really need to take back the strategy into our own hands not leave it to the Americans wholly."
Despite a post election lull in violence, recent days have shown an alarming rise in bloody attacks in the tribal regions, apparently in retaliation for army offensives. Today, mourners buried the last of the 43 people killed in a suicide bomb attack in the northwestern town of Darra Adam Khel. On Friday, a suicide bomber killed at least 44 people in the picturesque Swat valley at the funeral for a policeman killed in a roadside bombing.
While the attacks have become more frequent in Pakistan, analysts say there has been a corresponding drop in attacks across the border in eastern Afghanistan, where the majority of the 28,000 US troops in the country are based.
There has been increasing concerns that the instability is allowing al-Qaida and the Taliban to re-establish a presence in the region.