A Pakistani border region struggling against Taliban and al-Qaida militants will distribute 30,000 rifles to villagers in hopes that local militias can help the provincial government regain control, a top official said Sunday.
The missing piece is support for the villagers when the jihadis show up in force to teach them a lesson. The Pakistanis need to have military units ready to back up the villagers.
Or maybe we need to take over the whole project. When sub-national entities are threats to our security, we can't let the fiction of national control of a territory interfere with our ability to defend ourselves.
Perhaps the Pakistanis will cooperate with us so that our special forces, aircraft, and drones acting in direct support of the tribes, with conventional Pakistani military units on call to provide the muscle to confront large bands of Taliban, will make these militias resilient enough to control their territory.
But if the militias are not supported, they'll just get chewed up by the Taliban and al Qaeda thugs who will select targets to make demonstrations of what happens when you oppose the jihadis.
UPDATE: Perhaps the militias will get support:
More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.
It is a big fight in Pakistan that the Pakistanis haven't been able to defeat. How far will we go inside Pakistan?
How successful can we be in pushing Pakistan to stop thinking of India as the main threat to their existence? Good grief, if atomic missiles won't hold off India, are the Pakistanis seriously saying their army will? Wasn't getting nuclear missiles justified on the inability of Pakistan's military to stop the Indians if it came to war?
Pakistan needs to switch troops from the conventional order of battle facing east to their own internal jihadi problem.
