An offshoot of this discourse would be the lessons learnt from this operation. Was pakistani army planning this for years to ensure minimal collateral casualty which pakistan itself has been extremely critical of vis-a-vis Americans. If yes how was this done as holds a crucial key to all future conflicts in the world. Establishing Intel network to miniseries collateral casualty......
1. Lessons
Public support is paramount in any war specially an insurgency.
effective planning of countering propaganda & presenting own PoV
having political support of parties who build up support for military instead of mocking & criticizing it
Adapt , reorganize restructure the military for effective COIN operations. General Tariq Khans work on FC is an example who turned an ill equipped, demoralized and ill trained organisation into an effective fighting force.
2. Military Planning
A meticulous planning was taking place for some time, and there were some surgical operations already taking place SAWAT, South Waziristan and rest of tribal areas like Khyber agency etc were live examples
the sheer size, the topography and its location favors small gorilla forces that have many way points to sneak attack and ex-filtrate into Afghanistan hence part of the force was deployed on important choke points and mountain tops to foil known and obvious escape routes while the rest of the force went in supported by PAF, Army aviation and artillery.
3. Avoiding Collateral damage
it is impossible to have zero collateral damage in any military conflict be it a conventional or insurgency. the loss and damage to the infrastructure to public and private property is a given and there are always civilian or unintended casualties although any state who wants domestic and international opinion on its side would try to avoid it or minimize it. we repeated our Sawat and South Waziristan experience and gave people the chance to leave and clear although the risk of loosing the terrorists is always there but the loss of civilian lives is far worse than the risk of some terrorists escaping among people and they do get caught in burkas and many were taken out while trying to escape. Americans were not bound by such compulsion, they were not attacking their own people and they have the power to shape the world opinion so their drone strikes did result in civilian casualties as well.
4. How we did it
now that will be telling but few things that we did were
use of our own drones that provided us with real time and pin point intelligence against the terrorists. only 2 such strikes back in February brought the terrorists to their knees.
support of local population and better intelligence was also helpful. Sawat was a good success story in that case.
what a successful military operation needs is a quick follow up of political process and the civilian administration taking over to bring the life back to normalcy otherwise all such gains are lost and military is needed to come back.
unfortunately apart from 2 or 3 parties (ANP, MQM and PPP) all other parties have been hesitant , apologetic or all out supporters of TTP and taliban which doesnt help in building a consensus and public support
but looking at Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.. we are much better off (touch wood) and not only Taliban have lost considerable support but their mouthpiece parties have started to get a lot of scorn from the public and military has recently gained public approval.
look up General Tariq Khan's interview to Ragi Omar of AL Jazera its very old and relates to South Waziristan but Tariq Khan being a Pashton himself explains how Taliban eliminated the entire tribal structure to systematically take over.. that system of Maliks or elders needs to be re-installed and supported.
Bottom line.. suprior firepower and effective use of modern technology backed up with full-hearted political reconciliation and rehabilitation of the affected people
