The Swat operation (01082008)

According to media reports 59 persons were killed, including twenty five militants (Taliban), some security forces personnel and a number of civilians in the second phase of the Swat operation. The loss of lives of the security forces, civilians and militants is equally regrettable. However, the militants have left the government with no choice.
The lesson our law enforcement and security agencies (foremost among them the intelligence agencies) are not learning is that nurturing of small time gangsters and criminals, allowing them to become powerful by collecting small donations from a large number of people over a long period of time and then using them to achieve the unofficial agenda of the agencies only leads to bigger problems. This has been amply witnessed in the case of the Afghan War Lords, the militants of FATA and Swat and even in the urban areas like Karachi, where some organisations were allowed to flourish eventually becoming so strong as to challenge the military and the federal government. This has been the experience of Pakistan in the past 25 years. Twenty five years is a long time to learn from your mistakes and sadly our agencies have not.
The problem is aggravated by the fact that some of the agencies are following their own agenda, one of them still focussed on the Zia doctrine of strategic depth and the regional dominance. These diverse policies followed by different institutions in the country are causing real harm to the integrity of the country.
The politically elected government is not allowed to share in the critical policy making, being portrayed as opportunist, un-patriotic and incompetent. This leads to the critical policy making becoming hostage of a few vested interest groups who very quickly succumb to foreign pressures, as has been witnessed on many occasions in the past.
The Swat operation is one of many in what is now becoming a long series of such tragic mistakes. There have been Khyber Agency, Hangu, Waziristan and Baluchistan operations before this. Each operation has left the country more deeply scared with the people becoming more disillusioned with the security forces and the government in the country.
Unless the government recognises the underlying problems that have brought the country to where we are today, the edge of the precipice, and takes short, medium and long term measures to address these problems, nothing will change. After a brief period the militants having taken a beating will retreat to regroup and come back another day, with more recruits and more money to fight and kill again, as has been seen happening in Afghanistan and Iraq and if the American and NATO forces cannot deal with it then we should learn from their mistakes and not make the same mistakes ourselves.
The military cannot police each and every part of the country for long periods, especially the civilian areas. And if it is called upon to do that then this will destroy the intrinsic strength of our military, as witnessed in the period upto December 1971. Therefore, the military high command must allow the civilian government to take the initiative, support and help them in finding a solution to the quagmire the country is sinking into. By creating circumstances to flounder the elected government or adding and abating in such a move the institutions will be hurt more then the politicians.