[R-G] U.S. Plan Widens Role in Training Pakistani Forces in Qaeda Battle

[Anthony Fenton]

March 2, 2008
U.S. Plan Widens Role in Training Pakistani Forces in Qaeda Battle
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/world/asia/02military.html? 
ei=5088&en=0afd98819d68c45f&ex=1362114000&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewan 
ted=print

WASHINGTON — The United States military is developing a plan to send  
about 100 American trainers to work with a Pakistani paramilitary  
force that is the vanguard in the fight against Al Qaeda and other  
extremist groups in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas, American  
military officials said.

Pakistan has ruled out allowing American combat troops to fight Qaeda  
and Taliban militants in the tribal areas. But Pakistani leaders have  
privately indicated that they would welcome additional American  
trainers to help teach new skills to Pakistani soldiers whose army  
was tailored not for counterinsurgency but to fight a conventional  
land war against India.

Even though the training program would unfold over several months, it  
is being disclosed at a time of heightened operations in the unruly  
tribal areas along the Afghan border. At least eight people suspected  
of being Islamic militants were killed Thursday in a triple missile  
attack on a house used for training in the tribal areas.

For several years, small teams of American Special Operations forces  
have trained their Pakistani counterparts in counterinsurgency  
tactics. But the 40-page classified plan now under review at the  
United States Central Command to help train the Frontier Corps, a  
paramilitary force of about 85,000 members recruited from ethnic  
groups on the border, would significantly increase the size and scope  
of the American training role in the country.

United States trainers initially would be restricted to training  
compounds, but with Pakistani consent could eventually accompany  
Pakistani troops on missions “to the point of contact” with  
militants, as American trainers now do with Iraqi troops in Iraq, a  
senior American military official said. Britain is also considering a  
similar training mission in Pakistan, officials said. A spokesman at  
the British Embassy here declined to comment.

“The U.S. is bringing in a small number of trainers to assist  
Pakistan in their efforts to improve training of the Frontier Corps,”  
Elizabeth O. Colton, a spokeswoman for the United States Embassy in  
Islamabad, said in an e-mail message. “The U.S. trainers will be  
primarily focused on assisting the Pakistan cadre who will do the  
actual training of the Frontier Corps troops.”

Ms. Colton declined to specify how many American trainers would  
participate or where their bases would be. But Defense Department  
officials said that the number of American trainers could grow to  
about 100. Along with intensified missile strikes in Pakistan against  
suspected militants, the increased training program is another sign  
of the Bush administration’s growing concern and frustration with  
Pakistan’s failure to do more about Al Qaeda’s movements in the  
tribal areas.

The proposed expanded training program is modest compared with the  
training efforts under way in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is said to  
offer scant likelihood of blossoming into a much larger American  
combat presence. American officials are also acutely aware of  
Pakistani sensitivities to any United States military presence in the  
country, even trainers, and spoke largely on the basis of anonymity  
because of the diplomatic concerns and because the plan had not been  
formally approved.

Until now, American officials have worked closely with President  
Pervez Musharraf on counterterrorism policies, including training  
programs. The landslide victory by Pakistan’s opposition parties in  
last month’s parliamentary elections adds a degree of complication  
and confusion to any long-term military planning of this sort because  
it is unclear to what extent new leaders, like Asif Ali Zardari, the  
head of the victorious Pakistan Peoples Party and the widower of  
former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, will embrace those policies.

American officials are also taking a number of other steps to help  
increase Pakistan’s long-term ability to battle a newly resurgent Al  
Qaeda and other extremist groups in the tribal areas.

At the request of Pakistan’s new army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez  
Kayani, the Central Command two weeks ago sent a four-member  
intelligence team, led by a lieutenant colonel, to work closely with  
Pakistani intelligence officers in Islamabad. The Americans are  
helping with techniques on sharing satellite imagery and addressing  
Pakistani requests to buy equipment used to intercept the militants’  
communications, a senior American officer said.

The United States is also helping to establish border coordination  
centers in Afghanistan just across the Pakistan border, where Afghan,  
Pakistani and American officials can share intelligence about Al  
Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups in and around the tribal areas.

The Pentagon has spent about $25 million so far to equip the Frontier  
Corps with new body armor, vehicles, radios and surveillance  
equipment, and plans to spend $75 million more in the next year. Over  
all, a senior Bush administration official said, the United States  
could spend more than $400 million in the next several years to  
enhance the Frontier Corps, including building a training base near  
Peshawar.

The training proposal now under review at Central Command  
headquarters in Tampa, Fla., which oversees military operations in  
the Middle East and much of South Asia, is subject to the approval of  
the commander, Adm. William J. Fallon, and top Pentagon officials,  
including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Admiral Fallon said in an interview at his headquarters last week  
that additional trainers would be part of “a comprehensive approach”  
to address Pakistan’s security needs. “They want to do as much of  
this as they can themselves,” Admiral Fallon said.

Pakistani officials said they were aware of the Pentagon’s general  
offer for more trainers, but were not familiar with the details of  
the Central Command plan.

That document, titled “Plan for Training the Frontier Corps,”  
envisions a combination of Special Forces and regular Army troops  
working with the Frontier Corps in basic marksmanship, infantry  
skills and counterinsurgency techniques, Defense Department officials  
said.

Until recently, the Frontier Corps had not received American military  
financing because the corps technically falls under the Pakistani  
Interior Ministry, a nonmilitary agency that the Pentagon ordinarily  
does not deal with. But American and Pakistani officials say the  
Frontier Corps is drawn from Pashtun tribesmen, who know the language  
and culture of the tribal areas, and in the long term is the most  
suitable force to combat an insurgency there.

American and Pakistani officials acknowledge that it will take  
several years to build the Frontier Corps into an effective  
counterinsurgency. American officials say they have seen some  
Frontier Corps members wearing sandals on patrol and wielding barely  
functional Kalashnikov rifles with little ammunition.

The need for the training is evident. In January, hundreds of Islamic  
militants attacked a paramilitary fort in the restive South  
Waziristan tribal region in northwest Pakistan, killing 22 soldiers  
and taking several others hostage. A Pentagon official said the fort  
was overrun in part because the commander had failed to range his  
artillery properly before the attack.

“Pakistani military operations in the Federally Administered Tribal  
Areas have had limited effect on Al Qaeda,” Lt. Gen. Michael D.  
Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the  
Senate Armed Services Committee last week. “Pakistan recognizes the  
threat and realizes the need to develop more effective  
counterinsurgency and counterterrorism capabilities to complement  
their conventional forces.”

Robert L. Grenier, a former director of the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism  
Center, told a panel of the Council on Foreign Relations last week  
that any high-profile American military presence in the tribal areas  
or the neighboring North-West Frontier Province would be “the kiss of  
death.”

But Pakistan, he said, would welcome small numbers of trainers who  
kept a low profile, and were not involved in combat operations. “To  
an increasing degree as they see that it doesn’t cause the sky to  
fall, they will be willing to accept low-level support from the  
Americans, particularly in the form of training,” said Mr. Grenier, a  
former C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad.

Mr. Grenier added that the role American trainers played would rest  
largely with General Kayani, the new army chief. “He’s a very  
conservative, very cautious fellow,” Mr. Grenier said. “He will want  
to make his own decisions as to what is sustainable and what is not  
in the way of U.S. support.”