Washington: Pakistan still has no clear path to eliminate insurgents while situation in Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) in northwest Pakistan is deteriorating despite Pakistan’s military operation.
The semi-annual White House report to Congress is prepared to judge progress of the war in Afghanistan and operations against Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
The report noted a deterioration of the situation in inhospitable FATA alongside the Afghan border between January and March this year. The report noted the “tremendous human sacrifices” made by Pakistani forces in the region.
According to the report, an operation in Mohmand and Bajaur agencies areas that started in January to clear insurgent strongholds — Pakistani army has completed the task third time in two years.
It said the operation had been hampered by militant resistance, poor weather, the need to settle internally displaced people and the discovery of several caches of improvised explosive devices.
“What remains vexing is the lack of any indication of ‘hold’ and ‘build’ planning or staging efforts to complement ongoing clearing operations,” the report said.
“As such there remains no clear path to defeating the insurgency in Pakistan, despite the unprecedented and sustained deployment of over 147,000 forces.”
The report does note down positive military cooperation between Islamabad and Washington in the last three months, despite political tensions over the detention and subsequent release of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor and killer of two Pakistanis.
Recent Pakistani efforts in FATA had been coordinated with NATO-led forces in Afghanistan to ensure that insurgents could be captured as they tried to flee across the border, the reports said.
The US survey, portions of which remained classified and have not been released, also reflected rising recent bloodshed in Afghanistan, particularly among civilians.
A rising number of suicide attacks in recent months suggested that this year’s “fighting season” had begun in Afghanistan and seemed to suggest a shift in Taliban tactics against soft government and civilian targets.
“The shift in the Taliban’s greater use of murder and intimidation tactics reflects an insurgency under the pressure of a more substantive coalition military campaign,” the report said.
“That said, there are also indications that the Taliban remains confident of its strategy and resources, and heavy fighting is expected to resume this spring.”
The report also showed slight progress in the last six months in involving the international community to help stabilize Pakistan, and overall, modest progress in the US surge strategy to restrain Taliban.
But it said that absenteeism and attrition continued to pose a risk to the quality of the Afghan National Security Forces that are vital to Washington’s goal of eventually drawing down its troop presence in Afghanistan.
The report enclosed that the previously published summary of Obama’s 2010 annual review of the Afghanistan and Pakistan conflict, first issued in December.
That assessment found that Obama’s troop surge strategy announced in 2009 had made modest gains but the challenge was to make US progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan “durable” and “sustainable.”
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