Pakistani Capabilities for a Counterinsurgency Campaign: A Net Assessment

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Counterterrorism Strategy

Executive Summary

As a more effective Taliban steps up its operations along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Western observers increasingly are calling on Pakistan to implement a strategy of population-security counterinsurgency, or COIN. This paper will offer a net assessment of Pakistan's military capabilities to conduct such a campaign based on clearly stated assumptions, an analysis of open-source materials, and textbook COIN doctrine and best practices. It will examine the gap in Pakistani efforts and the choices required to fill this gap based on 1) the nature of the insurgency, including its strength, capabilities, tactics, and strategic objectives; 2) the terrain challenges posed by the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and 3) current and potential Pakistani military capabilities.

Counterinsurgency doctrine calls for political over military solutions, population security over enemy targeting, ground forces over airpower, and small-rather than large-force deployments for missions such as patrols, intelligence gathering, and development assistance. Thus far, the Pakistani military has conducted a campaign that runs nearly counter to all these prescriptions. This is primarily because of a military doctrine that is rooted in a persistent fear of a superior Indian army threatening the Pakistani core, but even if the Pakistani military hypothetically committed to a COIN campaign, it would face many obstacles to success.

The most optimistic scenario would allow Pakistan to redeploy only two-thirds of its forces from the Indian border (no more than 250,000 troops) to conduct COIN operations in the FATA and NWFP, which are projected to last two to five years. That means that its regular and paramilitary forces combined still would fall short of average force ratios necessary for a COIN success and woefully short of higher ratios, likely required given the adverse conditions and terrain Pakistan would face in this regional theater. In addition, Pakistan would need to recruit and manage more than 100,000 men in local militias to assist in holding areas that it cleared of insurgents.

An effective COIN campaign also would require the military to coordinate and combine efforts with Pakistan's civilian government, with which it continues to have poor relations.

Finally, Pakistan's reliance on American support to conduct a COIN campaign and offset its disadvantages actually could prove counterproductive, intensifying public resentment, further eroding morale, and strengthening militant recruitment and cohesion.

Counterinsurgency campaigns have confounded the best militaries in the world, including those of the United States, Britain, and Israel, and Pakistan has many more obstacles to overcome than those powers. Based on its limited capabilities and the tremendous potential costs in blood, treasure, and strategic tradeoffs, this paper finds that the chance of a Pakistani COIN success in its tribal areas is low in the short to medium term. Further, absent a dramatic change in threat assessments or new inducements, the Pakistani military is likely to maintain its current approach to the insurgency because of its gap in capabilities and ignore calls for a COIN strategy.

Sameer Lalwani is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science and an affiliate of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Research Fellow with the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program.

Summary Findings

This paper's findings for a prospective Pakistani military COIN campaign include:

1. Shortfalls. Between 370,000 and 430,000 more troops would be needed in the FATA and the NWFP region to meet the minimum force-to-population ratios prescribed by counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, much higher than current Pakistani deployments of 150,000, and even this is no assurance of success given adverse conditions. Moreover, Pakistan now is conducting low-intensity warfare rather than using counterinsurgency tactics, partly a function of its military doctrine.

2. Too Big for the Army Alone. Troop numbers required for a COIN campaign in the NWFP and the FATA would necessitate the calling up of Pakistani reserves or the extensive use of lesser-trained and more poorly equipped paramilitary and irregular forces, including the Frontier Corps.

3. Troops Able to be Released From Indian Border. Based on threat perceptions and baseline principles of force-to-force or force-to-space ratios, the Pakistani military likely would release, at most, 207,000 from its Indian border, 55,000 of whom already have been deployed to the tribal theater. Given organizational resistance and absent a steep escalation of the threat, it is highly unlikely that Pakistan would redeploy the additional 152,000 troops to the tribal areas for a COIN operation.

4. Time Frame and Force Composition. The most optimistic time frame for raising and training the requisite forces for a counterinsurgency would be two to five years.

Forces could include:

• 232,000 irregular forces. This figure would encompass 55,000 members of the Frontier Corps, 33,000 active police, 40,000 rangers, and 104,000 local lashkars.
• 287,000 regular army troops. This figure is based on the 95,000 troops already present in the region (from the I, IV, X, XI, and XXX Corps), 152,000 troops redeployed from the Indian border, and another 40,000 redeployed from regional corps in Quetta and Karachi.

This highly optimistic accounting could still mean a shortfall of 61,000 troops, which might be filled by reserves and new police and Frontier Corps recruits, all of whom would require time to train.

5. Strategy. Two strategies are possible for the Pakistani military:

• A conventional COIN campaign, with an oil-spot strategy that makes the best use of forces based on levels of instability in the region.
• An unconventional COIN campaign modeled on the U.S. strategy in Iraq, which depends on irregular forces and favorable events, such as voluntary ceasefires or fissures and defections within the insurgency.

6. Terrain Disadvantages. The demographic and topographic terrain of the FATA and the NWFP are ideal for a protracted insurgency and require higher than average force ratios and far more military assets than Pakistan possesses.

7. A Distant Development Agenda. Even piecemeal development in the region would be questionable, given the realities of the Pakistani economy. More fundamentally, reform would require undermining the power of the country's existing elites and land-owning classes, which dominate the political scene.

8. A Strategic Catch-22. Pakistan's limited resources would necessitate substantial U.S. and Western military aid, assistance in training, and economic support to wage a capital-, labor-, and time-intensive COIN campaign. However, as the U.S. role expands and becomes more visible, Pakistan likely would face a stiff public backlash, a steep decline in the morale of its regular and irregular forces, and a more cohesive insurgency.

9. Needed: An Exogenous Shock. Without substantial change in its threat perceptions of the Taliban or India or new inducements from the United States and NATO, the Pakistani military probably will take a default position on the tribal areas, clearing out extremist elements of the Taliban using current tactics while seeking to cut deals with more moderate elements in the hope that those elements could take control. It would draw on standard divide-and-rule tactics and perhaps on the lashkars. While this approach might stem attacks on Pakistan, it would not end cross-border raids or support of the Taliban's Afghanistan insurgency.

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