Brits to train Pakistan Frontier Force

From The Sunday Times
May 17, 2009
Pakistan to attack Taliban in Bin Laden’s lair

Christina Lamb and Daud Khattak in Buner
PAKISTAN is to extend its war on the Taliban beyond Swat into the fiercely independent tribal areas bordering Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda leadership are believed to be hiding.

“We’re going to go into Waziristan, all these regions, with army operations,” President Asif Ali Zardari told The Sunday Times in an interview. “Swat is just the start. It’s a larger war to fight.”

He said Pakistan would need billions of pounds in military assistance and aid for up to 1.7m refugees, the biggest movement of people since the country’s split from India in 1947.

To help take on the militants, the Pakistan army is for the first time to accept counterinsurgency training from British and American troops on its own soil.

“We need to develop our capability and we need much more support,” said Zardari. “We need much, much more than the $1 billion [military aid] we’ve been getting, which is nothing. We’ve got 150,000 troops in [the tribal areas] - just the movement of that number would cost $1 billion.”
More on the link
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6301815.ece

 

We've been here before, there's a load of memoirs and histories on the subject & a lot of the old boys are still alive. I'm sure there was an article the Sunday Times threw up a few years ago about a chappie who was in the Frontier Force, apparently he was getting a lot attention from the high-ups because his experience in the region was valuable to our current campaign across the border.

Anyway type in Frontier Force at Amazon and you get a load of titles, here are just a few:


http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/187305002X/?tag=armrumser-21

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0014MHY7A/?tag=armrumser-21

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0000CQV5Y/?tag=armrumser-21

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0195472039/?tag=armrumser-21


Iim sure our experiences and shared military tradition will come in very useful.

Now where did I put my Khyber Knife?

 

Well we'll do a better job of it than our allies simply because of that background. From my little experience working with Pakisatani natives the British are still held in a certain degree of respect.
Is "Bugles and a Tiger" back in print yet? It ought to be.


Or there's this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxX7YW_97QU
(sorry, couldn't resist. )

 

Back to the future, best dig out the inter-war manuals and reinstall British instructors at Quetta

 

Absolutely, but I fear the biggest problem will be that some of our younger officers may have problems with the rigid formality of the Mess.






(standards may have slipped over here in the last few years).

But to be serious, I hope whoever is running the training program has researched the colonial experience thorourghly and spoken to as many of the old boys as possible. History and experience are the best teachers of all.

 

I have to wonder, though, what exactly it is we're expecting them to achieve? We've done the equivalent of drawing an arbitrary line down the middle of someone's front room and now we're expecting to be able to make the two sides of the family respect it?

Far easier and less costly to redraw the line in the face of pre-exsting reality, IMO.