SPEAKING FREELY A way out for new army chief

By Atif Salahuddin

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-02-240114.html

General Raheel Sharif's succession as Pakistan's new army chief, after a victory over other aspirants to the powerful and coveted position, has finally ended the enduring six-year tenure of General Ashfaq Kayani.

During his time at the helm, General Kayani oversaw a rapidly deteriorating internal and external security situation. This included numerous domestic terror attacks - Iraq-style killings that claimed thousands of Pakistani lives - infiltration attacks on the Mehran naval and Kamra air bases and an audacious attack on the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi itself.

If this was not enough, Pakistan's purported "ally", the US, launched the embarrassing Abbottabad raid which killed Osama bin Laden, and the murderer of two Pakistanis in Lahore - CIA agent Raymond Davis - was simply allowed to go home as a free man.

US drone attacks, which have become symbolic of American impunity and intransigence in dealing with Pakistan, increased exponentially with thousands of men, women and children being slaughtered in the tribal areas all in the name of fighting terrorism.

Amid all these incidents, it was perhaps the slaughter of 24 Pakistani troops in Salala at the hands of the US-led NATO forces which most undermined Kayani's position - if the commander-in-chief could launch operations in the tribal areas under American pressure but not lift a finger to defend and avenge his troops, what faith could the rest of Pakistan have in him? 

General Kayani's weak leadership, lack of robustness and caving into American pressure will characterize his legacy.

Incoming General Raheel Sharif rightly has some weighty expectations to bear; he has to reverse the decline overseen by his predecessors and improve the security situation of the country, all while restoring the prestige of the army.

Raheel has had the advantage of holding a clean slate. Having served as the inspectorate of training and evaluation for the Pakistan army in his last position, he was perceived as having relatively clean hands as far as the fighting in the tribal areas is concerned.

However, all of that has been put into jeopardy with the commencement of the fighting in North Waziristan this week following a suicide attack in Khajuri which killed 20 Pakistani troops. Provocations such as this were always likely given that America has been pushing for such a military operation for over two years now. In ominous military action that has followed, eyewitnesses have alleged that scores of men, women, and children have either been directly targeted or killed as a result of indiscriminate shelling ordered by local commanders.

Drone strikes by America have also continued after the changing of the guard. In this respect Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's pre-election sloganeering has also pragmatically evolved from strongly condemning and demanding the end of the US drone strikes, to the post-election position of not only accepting them but effectively ending all talk of negotiations with the tribal insurgents.

The convenient drone strike assassination of Hakimullah Mehsud and a string of alleged militant attacks have put paid to that. This though is hardly surprising, for the US is not going to renounce such tactically useful violence and Sharif has determined that he can ill afford to be on the wrong side of Washington.

Michael Klugman, writing on Nawaz Sharif's recent US visit, states, "As US forces struggle to attain some level of stabilization success in Afghanistan in the months prior to their full withdrawal, Washington will be in no mood to modify - much less cease - its drone policy. It will hold fast to what it regards as the only available and effective counter militancy tool deployable against Pakistan-based extremists that wreak havoc in Afghanistan - and on Americans fighting in that country."

It is all too easy for General Raheel to be sucked into this continuum of violence initiated by Musharraf's ruinous polices of supporting the US in