Threat to Peshawar wakes up Pakistan’s generals

Officers in Pakistan’s Frontier Corps made a small display to reporters after their counterattack against militants who earlier this week seemed to threaten Peshawar. Frontier Corps soldiers showed reporters ten blindfolded militiamen, along with captured small arms and ammunition.

This would seem to be a meager outcome from the multi-day operation by Pakistani security forces. Mangal Bagh’s militia was accused last week of banditry and kidnapping inside Peshawar and nearby towns. Mr. Bagh has managed to withdraw his forces intact. He even managed a television interview during which he denied seeking to capture Peshawar.

The recent violence in the Khyber-Peshawar area may have been one part organized crime and one part a probe to see what it would take to get the Pakistani government to react. The greatest surprise from this incident was how swift and flamboyant was the government’s response to the possible threat to Peshawar, and by implication the Coalition’s main supply route into Afghanistan.

Surprising because the new civilian government in Islamabad has previously shown no inclination at all to confront the militants in the northwest tribal areas. The government’s standard practice thus far has been to agree to truces with the militants, even those accused of murdering Benazir Bhutto. So why the rapid and vigorous response against the Bagh militia near Peshawar, led by a man who seems to be more interested in money than politics or Islamic ideology?

It is one thing for Pakistan’s leaders, both civilian and military, to accommodate the frontier militants. It has long served Pakistan’s interests (or so Pakistan’s leaders have long believed) to have the militants direct their violence into Afghanistan, which Pakistan holds in low regard and considers part of its “strategic depth” in the face of the threat from India.

But Mr. Bagh’s actions around Peshawar threatened to alarm the Americans in Afghanistan. Even if Mr. Bagh was just a simple brigand, Pakistan’s generals wanted to take no chances. Had the Americans feared a cut-off of their main supply route, the resulting military emergency could have led to a crisis between the Pakistanis and the Americans. On either a political or military level, that would not have been good for the Pakistani military. Thus, an incentive for the generals to act decisively against Mr. Bagh and his men.

Needless to say, there will be more chapters to this story. Other Islamist groups in the frontier region understand the American army’s dependence on the Khyber-Peshawar main supply route. Their ideological and strategic goals go beyond local organized crime. Will Pakistan’s generals be able to put these groups down as easily as they put down Mr. Bagh’s?