Stratpage’s ever excellent Kaushik Kapistahalam (check out his body of work!) provides an excellent & probing article about the lawless western provinces of Pakistan, the hunt for Al Qaeda and a disastrous battle in Waziristan –

June 13, 2005: Few things have captured American imagination in the war on terror like the idea of soldiers chasing terrorists in the mountainous “tribal areas” near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. However, US media coverage of the Pakistani operations has been clichéd and superficial. Analysis reveals that the performance of Pakistani troops against small bands of foreign and tribal fighters has produced mixed results…

As usual, stratpage.com has no permalinks so I’m gonna excerpt some large chunks of the article below. I highly recommend visiting the site ASAP to get the rest of the meat….

Pakistan has seven federally administered tribal areas, six of which span about 20 percent of Pakistan’s 2,250 kilometers long border with Afghanistan… Since 2002, there are reportedly anywhere between 600 and 1,500 foreign al Qaeda fighters in and around South Waziristan, made up of Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs…. [They] reportedly enjoy wide support among the Waziri and Mehsud tribal populace of the two Waziristans, estimated to number some 750,000. After a lot of pressure from the US, Pakistan decided to target militant bases in South Waziristan. Under the overall command of the Peshawar based XI Corps of the Pakistan Army (PA), the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) was first sent into the region in March 2004. The initial push was aimed at a militant strong hold at Kaloosha village just outside Wana, the provincial capital of South Waziristan and minutes from a major Pakistan army base. Some 2,000 FC troops belonging to the South Waziristan Scouts (SWS) were sent on a probing raid. It was a disaster. The militants, backed up by tribals, estimated to be around 200, were able to corner the SWS in a classic guerilla trap… When the smoke cleared the militants were found to have escaped with a dozen army hostages (some of whom were later executed). Western reports said that the PA lost some 150 men in the Kaloosha debacle, while managing to eliminate some 25 rebels most of whom appeared to be locals.

Now that’s just f-‘d up. To give you an idea of just how bad this is, most US engagements from Vietnam up to Iraq now typically result in somewhere between a between a 10-1 and 60-1 kill ratio even (especially?) in the face of numerically superior enemy (credit tech, air power, superior tactics & coordination, etc.). By contrast, in this engagement – despite heading in with a nearly 10-1 numerical advantage and almost certainly a large technical advantage, the Pakistani’s were handed a 1-6 battering.

The closest modern parallel might be the staggering defeat of a Russian expeditionary force sent to hunt rebels at the first battle of Grozny. What’s worse is that unlike Grozny – perhaps the ultimate modern example of the perils facing formal military formations in a dense urban environment – the debacle in Wazirstan appears to have been in the open, albeit rugged, desert. Superior air power, artillery, and mobility should have created every tactical advantage for the Pakistani’s who nevertheless appear to have been b*tch-slapped.

But wait, there’s more –

…To add to the problem, there were credible reports of PA soldiers, up to the level of Colonel, refusing to fight their “brethren” and some FC men even switching sides when challenged by the rebels. Faced with plummeting morale and a disciplinary crisis, the Pakistani army sued for peace, resulting in a pact between the PA and the tribal Al Qaeda commander Nek Mohammed on April 24, 2004. The deal did not last but a few hours… US forces across the border were not pleased at this development since the deal did not result in the lowering of cross-border forays by the jihadists. On June 18, 2004, Nek Mohammed was killed by a Hellfire missile fired by a predator drone, even though the PA took credit for the operation. …Meanwhile, PA began relying on air support and real time intelligence from US electronic eavesdropping. Pakistani helicopter pilots began taking night-training lessons from US forces. …On February 8, 2005, the PA signed yet another “peace” accord, this time with the Mehsud fighters, granting them pardon in return for an end to their attacks on Pakistani forces. While the PA claimed that this deal was solely with the “good” Mehsud commanders, meant to isolate Abdullah, the pardoned Mehsud commanders still pledged loyalty to Abdullah and would not commit stop attacking US forces across the border.

Sigh. I suppose it’s no wonder we’re starting to hear more and more about US troops operating within Pakistan as well as some fueling grim projections on the future of Pakistan.