‘Pakistan cuts troops on Indian border’

NEW DELHI — For the first time in 60 years, Pakistan has considerably reduced the number of troops along the heavily guarded border with India.

The matter has come up in the Cabinet Committee on Security headed by the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

Turmoil in Pakistan and unrest in its western areas, have resulted in Pakistani troops being pulled away in large numbers from the border areas adjoining Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Reports quoting intelligence agencies said here yesterday that the aggressively positioned eastern frontier areas adjoining India have become extremely thin. Pakistani troops that otherwise are positioned to counter Indian forces, have been moved out to Waziristan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the western borders, reports said.

Intelligence officials have been quoted as saying that strain is starting to tell on the regular Pakistan army with tensions mounting in the north west frontier. “The very sign of pressure building up against Pakistan is that their forces which never compromised on its eastern border have been moved out leaving the border areas along India lean and lanky,” said top officials.

Some 38,000 troops from key border installations have been repositioned, the Caninet Committee has been told. It is said as many as 15 Infantry Brigades of Pakistan army have been repositioned on the border areas of north west frontier to fight Taleban.

Many reserve troops and units that were on duty on the borders at Indo-Pak Line of Control have been moved out. Even soldiers from the elite strike corps that are trained to slice into India in the event of war along with reserves with the army GHQ in Rawalpindi have been mobilised. However, this doesn’t indicate that Pakistan’s eastern border has been left totally unattended.

The thinning of troops indicate that Islamabad is quite apprehensive about internal developments more than any untoward events unfolding with India. Officials were quoted as saying that Islamabad isn’t worried with New Delhi that has seemingly been sympathetic with the situation in its neighbour that forced President Pervez Musharraf impose 'emergency' last Saturday.

“For them the priority is surely the western flank that has brought them more trouble as of now. With Indo-Pak peace process still on, Islamabad can at least trust its new found camaraderie with New Delhi,” officials said. Latest inputs have shown that the Mangla-based Army Reserve North (ARN) and Multan-based Army Reserve South (ARS) too have been repositioned, said Indian Express newspaper.

“They have been dispatched to Peshawar or Quetta for deployment along the troubled Afghan frontier. Units from the Force Command Northern Area (FCNA) that controls Pakistan’s Azad Kashmir region and forces from the dual-role XI Corps in Peshawar — tasked with defending the Afghan border have also been moved to fight the Taleban,” said the report.

The reports quoting valid details, point out that written instructions were sent by Pakistan Army GHQ to all formation commanders to determine the quantity of forces each unit could relieve for deployment along the Afghan border and even the hinterland. After that a classified list of ‘extra troops’ was drawn up by GHQ based on an internal audit that was carried out by all formations.

Top US-based defence analysts watching developments in India and Pakistan, have warned that this pressure on Pakistani armed forces could lead to an ‘abnormally high percentage of Pakistani troops on active duty’ — a factor that is dangerous, as it can ‘crack open’ the army against President Musharraf himself.

“Intelligence data says that out of the 66 Infantry Brigades (about 1.65 lakh troops) in the Pak army, 33 brigades are currently on active duty. Of these, 18 brigades (45,000 troops) are deployed for counter-terror operations. With half its troops committed to active duty, the army is finding it hard to rotate and relive formations,” said reports.

“It is a major operational constraint. In the event of war, the whole army gets mobilised but in an ideal scenario, one-third of the troops should be on duty, while the rest are in transit or in a peace area. In long term, it will get increasingly difficult to manage the already strained forces,” top officials were quoted as saying.

On this scenario, strategic affairs expert Stephen Cohen has pointed out that “the (Pakistani) army might lose its coherence. It is a multi-ethnic army, derived from the old British Indian army, and from time to time it, like its predecessor, has had ethnic-based mutinies (the most notable being the revolt of the Bengali elements of all three services in 1970).”

“At present, about 18 per cent of the Pakistan army are Pushtuns or of Pushtun-origin. There are reports of officers refusing to attack targets, and the astonishing case, still unexplained, of nearly 300 officers and jawans surrendering to the militants in Waziristan — where they are still being held hostage,” Cohen wrote for Brookings Institution explaining that America was in for a tough ride with developments in Pakistan.

Reuters article:

ANALYSIS-Military mind leads Pakistan into state of confusion

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Wed Nov 7, 2007 6:28pm EST

By Simon Cameron-Moore

ISLAMABAD, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Strike fast, eliminate the enemy, and get out quickly.

President Pervez Musharraf, the former commando, often talks in those terms about operations against al Qaeda militants.

For the past few days Pakistan's military leader has taken somewhat similar action against troublesome judges under the cloak of emergency rule and suspension of the constitution.

"I have not learnt to surrender. I know how to face the situation. I never give in, I will confront," Musharraf said in an address to the nation on Saturday after taking steps to avoid any chance of a courtroom defeat that could have ended his rule.

The general's pre-emptive strike to rid himself of a Supreme Court bench that might have annulled his Oct. 6 re-election victory has heightened uncertainties in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Some analysts reckon Musharraf has set off a chain of events he cannot control and will ultimately consume him, while others see him wounded but hanging on. Nobody sees him going easily.

"I think his problem is his own ego," said Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution in Washington. "He's always seen himself as the saviour of Pakistan and the indispensable leader."

If Musharraf is damaged too badly and is unable to function properly as president or army chief, his own generals could ask him to step aside.

"It may come to push rather than anything else -- it's hard to predict these things -- but the system bends only so far before it starts to break," Cohen said.

Under fire from Western allies and the international community, and with an angry Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's most popular and divisive opposition figure, now back in Islamabad, Musharraf appears to be hoping he can just replace the judges quickly, manage the politicians and make the whole mess go away.

RIGHT-HAND MAN

The general's political right-hand man, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, told Dawn newspaper the emergency could be over in two to three weeks.

Other high-ranking officials say elections, which had been expected in January, will be held on schedule or slightly later.

"If they do hold elections fairly soon -- that is within a month of the scheduled elections -- then he can get out of this, he can work a 'managed' election," said Cohen, adding that Bhutto could end up in government with old political foes such as Hussain.

Taking Musharraf at his word, and he has backtracked before, he is "determined" to quit as army chief and hold elections once his legal wrangles are resolved.

The trouble is that smashing the country's judiciary and muzzling the media -- television news channels were taken off the air -- will take an awful lot longer to fix.

"If two weeks after Nov. 3 Musharraf takes off his uniform and comes as a civilian president and says he's going to hold elections, I don't think that's satisfactory," said independent analyst Nasim Zehra.

"What happens about the judiciary? Are we going to take that as a fait accompli?"

They were hardly conducive circumstances for elections, which were never going to be free and fair so long as the party of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf deposed and exiled, was being suppressed.

COURTS BOYCOTT

Lawyers are up in arms, boycotting courts following the dismissal of judges such as chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who refused to go along with Musharraf's interpretation of the law.

Musharraf quoted Abraham Lincoln while justifying himself by saying a limb had to be sacrificed to save the nation.

Most Pakistanis believe Musharraf was rescuing himself from a possible adverse ruling by the Supreme Court hearing challenges to his re-election while still army chief last month.

"He is a cheater, like other dictators we've had in the past," said Aamir Ali, who joined hundreds of other students at a protest in Islamabad that passed off peacefully on Wednesday. A text message circulated by mobile phone after Musharraf said he wanted to stop the nation committing suicide put a wry interpretation on his words that many Pakistanis would agree with.

"Suicide attack on the constitution, judiciary and media. The victims died, the bomber survived."

The judges Musharraf has chosen to fill the empty benches are unlikely to inspire confidence.

Those judges can strike down the challenges that made the Supreme Court stop Musharraf declaring victory after his re-election by parliament in October.

But analysts say they cannot restore his diminished moral authority or crumbling approval ratings.

Nor will a pliant judiciary go down well with foreign investors, even though the economy has been averaging 7 percent growth annually for the past four years. "You're going to have, I think, more of the same of what has been happening in Pakistan -- a bunch of fat cats and robber barons are going to hold sway," said Asad Saeed, an independent economist based in Karachi.

Musharraf is safe, analysts say, so long as the army stays loyal, mass protests are contained and Western governments calculate that they need Musharraf to have any chance of defeating al Qaeda globally and of stabilising Afghanistan by crushing the Taliban.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that Washington doesn't "have all its chips on Musharraf", which begged the question where are the rest.

"It's a bluff," said Cohen. (Editing by Roger Crabb and Alex Richardson)

From the AP:

November 07, 2007 at 11:55:5 PST
Negroponte: Musharraf Is 'Indispensable'

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By ANNE FLAHERTY
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told Congress on Wednesday that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is an "indispensable" ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism and that "partnership with Pakistan and its people is the only option."

In prepared testimony, Negroponte also told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that administration officials "strongly disagree" with Musharraf's crackdown on his political opponents.

"We strongly counseled against emergency rule, but Pakistan's leadership did not follow our advice," Negroponte said.

His remarks echoed the Bush administration's position in the days since Musharraf declared emergency rule: a mild and measured response, careful not to go too far in rebuking a close anti-terrorism ally. It stands in sharp contrast to the administration's tougher stance taken when Myanmar's military regime cracked down on pro-democracy protesters in September, for instance.

While he acknowledges an ongoing review of U.S. aid to Pakistan in light of the crisis, Negroponte does not announce any changes to U.S. policy.

Musharraf "has been indispensable in the global war on terror, so indispensable that extremists and radicals have tried to assassinate him multiple times," Negroponte said. "The bottom line is, there's no question that we Americans have a stake in Pakistan."

Negroponte also urged Musharraf to follow through with commitments to convene elections and relinquish his position as Army chief.

"The current state of emergency calls into question these commitments, but we should work to achieve their fulfillment, not pre-emptively write them off," he said.

Negroponte faces a skeptical Democratic-led Congress. Many lawmakers say the U.S. should consider cutting off foreign aid to Pakistan and that Musharraf shouldn't be so readily praised.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, planned to offer a resolution condemning Musharraf's actions, while others said military aid should be withheld.

"We have the worst of all possible worlds," said Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., who chairs the panel's subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia. "Our ally is an isolated and deeply resented leader who is less popular with his own people than Osama bin Laden."

The White House on Wednesday defended its handling of the situation, which erupted on Saturday.

"It's been about five days," White House press secretary Dana Perino said. "I grant you that it feels long for all of us who are interested in wanting to get instant reaction. We are trying to get Pakistan back on its path to democracy."

The Bush administration has been reviewing U.S. aid to Pakistan in the wake of Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule. Musharraf says his actions, which include suspending his country's constitution and ousting its top judge, were necessary to prevent a takeover by Islamic extremists.

The Bush administration is seeking $800 million for Pakistan for the current budget year. Since 2001 the U.S. has provided Pakistan with an estimated $9.6 billion.

At the Pentagon, a senior officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters that the U.S. military puts great value in its relationship with the Pakistani military and does not want to see that diminished.

"First and foremost is the cooperation along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan," said Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs. "Those military operations, conducted by forces on either side of the border, are done with increasing openness, collaboration, synchronization. There's good communication between U.S. and Afghan forces on the one side and the Pakistan forces on the other. And we would certainly not want to see that jeopardized in any way."

Ham said that U.S. military liaison officers in Islamabad have reported that communication and cooperation with the Pakistani military on operations along the Afghan border have not been affected by the political crisis.

"Those contacts seem to be quite good still," Ham said.

A senior member of Musharraf's legal team said Wednesday that the United States is more worried about fighting terrorists than about seeing democracy flourish in his country.

Ahmad Raza Khan Qasuri, an advocate at Pakistan's Supreme Court, also warned the U.S. that "we expect from our friends advice, not dictation. We are a sovereign country."

"Do we ask for a checklist from the United States, 'Why did you go to Iraq? Why did you go to Afghanistan?'" he said at the Middle East Institute. "The United States, instead of dictation, they should give us friendly advice."

AP Military Writer Robert Burns contributed to this story.

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