Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteInspiration for this post: McDonald, Myra. "Facing up to the 'war in Pakistan'". Reuters Blog, September 14, 2008.
The present head-to-head contact between American incursion and Pakistani statement and movement on behalf of the sovereignty of its borders may serve to dim what the Pakistani military has been doing to its horseback riding guest militants and their friends in the tribal territories.
Pakistani defense forces, led by better than merely competent officers--this is a military that has been in business in every sense of that word since yanking Pervez Musharraf back from an outbound flight--have today more cause than ever to settle with the pet fighting machine it helped develop during the Soviet's rough vacation in Afghanistan.
Well educated, multilingual, up on their golf games, invested in national and international enterprise, Pakistan's military is not one to turn back the clock 1400 years.
As regards "contested territory"--and that is tribes fought over by incumbent leaders and invading zealots, not by Afghani, American, Coalition, Israeli, or European interests--Pakistan's paramilitary presence in the tribal areas has been subject to the raiding abilities of motivated locals. To defeat the same or any rural guerrilla movement requires both the application of overwhelming force, martial tenacity, and a good policing, reconstruction, and transformation plan for when the shooting stops.
This time, out in the mountains in force, taking back their land, the assets belonging to all of Pakistan, and avenging the deaths of civilians, police officers, and military by the dozens, the Pakistani army and air force look plainly, unmistakingly committed to the border-to-border development of the conservative Islamic state.
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