WAKE UP PAKISTANIO...part4

razian97

Voter (50+ posts)
An article from THE TIMES LONDON
Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kiyani creates new set of problems
written by Bronwen Maddox
Any strategy to tackle the Afghan-Pakistani border will depend on the willingness of the Pakistani Army to hold its side of the line. That is now complicated, however, by the deliberately reserved style in which General Ashfaq Kiyani, its Chief of Staff, is leading the force. He is reluctant to deploy troops in the face of great public opposition.
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, was reassured this week by pledges from General Kiyani that he has no plans to mount a coup, as did his predecessor Pervez Musharraf, leading to eight years of military rule. Senior officials in Washington have also been reassured in the turmoil since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
The other side of General Kiyani's determination not to play in the front line of politics is that he is reluctant to take the army into areas where its action would meet passionate opposition by local people. That very deliberate decision to break with years of military rule may make it harder to unite Pakistan under its central Government, some Western officials believe.
General Kiyani inherited from Mr Musharraf a deeply demoralised army, shaken by six years of uncomfortable alliance with the US in the War on Terror - and particularly by attempts to crack down on militants on the Western border with Afghanistan. Mr Musharraf's repeated resort to military solutions in the tribal areas and, most controversially, in Baluchistan, was an evasion of the political problems that those uprisings represented. In Baluchistan in particular, local people were protesting at what they felt was the exploitation of the gas resources in the province without enough reward for them.