Pakistani Paramilitaries

A recent firefight near Asadabad, Afghanistan was ended when US Air Force F-15Es and a B-1 dropped several 500-lb bombs into Pakistan. Only trouble is, the planes apparently targeted Pakistani paramilitaries, killing 11 of them. Pakistan is upset over the loss.

The incident highlights one of the perils of employing paramilitary forces – the difficulty of distinguishing them from the actual insurgents. My last tour in Iraq saw much of the same, although we were not being engaged by insurgents at the time, so there was little danger of mistakenly killing the Neighborhood Watch guys. However, on more than one occasion I had aircraft working for me report some sort of suspicious activity that looked an awful lot like, say, insurgents placing an IED on a dirt road that we used from time to time. After a watching for a bit, we realized we couldn’t identify them as a threat with any reasonable certainty, and eased our proverbial fingers off the triggers. When we stopped out there on patrol the next day, turns out, it was just the local Neighborhood Watch filling sandbags to fortify one of their checkpoints. We left them with a polite suggestion that they might not want to fill sandbags in the middle of a road at night.

On the whole, paramilitary forces are one of the most effective tools in COIN. Although they don’t have the training and equipment of regular military forces, their knowledge of the local area and population makes them far more adept at separating the insurgent “fish” from the “sea” of the local populace. Many have pointed to the Awakening Movement in Iraq as a key ingredient to the current success in Al Anbar province, and rightfully so. I have seen the difference between Anbar province of 2006, where the Iraqi Army battalion I supported struggled to maintain control of a 4-5 kilometer stretch of battlespace, and the same area in late 2007 and early 2008. The area was so peaceful that the Iraqi Army shifted the entire brigade to another province and gave responsibility for the area to a battalion. The difference was the rise of the Provincial Security Forces in the area.

The Afghan border presents a real predicament for Coalition forces. I spent some time in Asadabad in 2003, and the base out there is not all that far from the border. Add a Pakistani paramilitary force such as the Frontier Corps in close proximity to a Coalition outpost, and the potential for cross-border incidents such as this one is very high. I have no idea what level of coordination is being done with the Pakistanis, but it is apparent that it is not enough.

How to prevent the continuation of this sort of incident? Well, one way would be to restrict all Coalition fires across the border. But since the enemy regularly operates across the border, and places no such restriction on their fighters, it’s pretty easy to see why this is a poor choice, militarily. Better communication with the Frontier Corps seems to be the answer. But how, in a situation like a firefight in the mountains of the Afghan/Pakistani border, do you communicate with the Pakistanis that you are targeting a group of personnel at location X? And how do the Pakistanis, in turn, verify the location of paramilitary forces in the area and communicate whether the targeted individuals are friendly? Or contact the Frontier Corps soldiers and tell them to mark their position in such a way that it is recognizable to Coalition aircraft? All of this in a timely fashion, because the guys in the Coalition combat operations center are very aware that their fellow Soldiers are taking fire on some mountainside and need help. I’ve been in a COC in that sort of situation in Iraq, and having the ability to rain down high explosive from the sky to help out your brothers is very satisfying, but it can also be incredibly difficult to wait for things like identifying a paramilitary force on patrol in the vicinity.

So, I’m going to come completely out of left field with an idea for solving this sort of problem. Rather than relying on communications with the Pakistani Frontier Corps, ask Pakistan to allow Coalition personnel to train and advise the Frontier Corps in the border regions. This puts Coalition personnel and communications equipment in position to track and communicate the location of Frontier Corps patrols. The benefits to the Pakistanis are better training and equipment for their paramilitary forces, and a reduced likelihood that they will be targeted by Coalition units when operating in the vicinity of Coalition forces. The benefit to the Coalition is a more capable force patrolling the Pakistani side of the border, interdicting the insurgents before they attack our forces on the Afghan side. It will also help to maintain good relations with Pakistan, as we are less likely to mistakenly kill their troops.

Of course, there are many problems with this idea. Where do we get the manpower and equipment? Providing enough advisors for Afghan and Iraqi forces is difficult enough as it is. How to overcome Pakistani objections to foreign troops on their soil, even in an advisory and training capacity? They’ve ‘re obviously not interested in having our forces operating in their territory. Of course, I’m not talking actual Coalition combat formations, I’m talking small teams in advisory capacities similar to what we’ve done in Colombia and the Philippines. I would think that should be a bit easier for them to swallow. It’s a pretty tough idea to implement, but one that can bear a lot of fruit in the struggle to secure the border regions and prevent cross-border operations by the insurgents. Not only will it aid in the discrimination of enemy insurgents from friendly paramilitaries, but it will make the Frontier Corps a stronger and more reliable counter-insurgent force. And ultimately, strong indigenous forces are required to win against this cross-border insurgency.

Edited to add: I’m leaving unsaid the possibility that the Air Force did, in fact, successfully target the individuals who attacked Coalition forces that day, and that those individuals might also have been members of the Frontier Corps. That is because I don’t intend for this post to be about the reliability of paramilitary forces, which is another problematic issue. Coalition advisors could help to increase their reliability in terms of loyalty to the government of Pakistan, but ultimately it is up to the Pakistani military to take necessary steps to ensure the Frontier Corps in the Northwestern Frontier Province is not working against us.

Update: I was unable to find the complete footage of the strike earlier, but Defense Tech provided it. From the raw footage, it looks pretty clear that the guys who ate the high explosives were asking for it. Even UAS footage doesn’t necessarily tell all, but I’m pretty confident at this point that if those guys were Frontier Corps, they were bad apples. Even if the UAS lost track of the original group of fighters and hit FC troops, the close proximity would indicate at least a degree of complicity on their part. So, tough luck boys, but when you mess with the bull you get the horns.