Thanks for a good post. Military life is a tough life no doubt, and the soldiers know they are putting their lives at great risk every day. There are obviously a million things the Military's Top brass is doing behind the scenes but an Ordinary soldier and Citizens are not aware of it. All they see is 21 Jawans massacred. The Top leadership needs to send messages openly like going after these evil SoBs and killing the shi.t out of them, so that ordinary jawans and Citizens know that the Leadership cares about them and the lives lost are valuable. But there is complete silence as far as actions are concerned.
For Military leadership to gain trust and respect, they need to go after these A-Holes inside and outside the country. If they do not do anything, their inaction will demoralize solders and citizens.
Before you read: This is a very long post, but I assure you it’s on topic and not a emotional rant or anything. I tried to explain a bit of how I think we need to deal with this situation and the causes of the incident and the inaction.
My words aside I understand the frustration of our the people and the posters on this forum. Regardless of the reason We obviously can’t be happy about these incidents. People react so strongly because they care about their jawans and the security of their country, something which is understandable and commendable.
i also don’t believe the military leadership are angels who haven’t made mistakes, they’ve made plenty and there are many incidents which could have been avoided or handled better.
The issue is as I mentioned before that the average Pakistani does not see the bigger picture, the military cannot go shooting whatever it wants and launching operations anywhere without the permission of the govt and the support of the people. Pakistan’s military is always in this situation where If it doesn’t take action it gets flak for it and if it does take action it gets flak for it.
You look at the political implications of the military attacking PTM or Afghanistan and such, two obvious reasons for these attacks, and you realize why they hold back. People will cry about injustice and undemocratic action and blah blah blah, our enemies will use it to make us look weak. It might just create more issues in Pakistan than it will solve, at the same time inaction is costing us dearly aswell.
I agree that it is time we took the fight to the enemy, but I don’t think the military is at fault here, the people are. Zarb-e-Azb was so successful (much more so than the Ops in 2007 and 2009 even, two successful ops themselves) because the people for once wholeheartedly supported the militaries action due to the airport and APS attacks (you know how they say a common enemy can unite a nation? This was an example), and due to this Zarb-E-Azb wasn’t just successful militarily it was also successful politically, it changed so many people’s opinions about their loyalties to the Taliban and extremists groups and that is how we uprooted that ideology of terrorism and extremism. Even the government and the opposition parties were United on something for once and that really helped to get the people United too. If it had just been a mere military action where the army went and shot all the terrorists, it’d be back to the same in a year or two. Like it has been in afghanistan. But it wasn’t, it changed the entire security situation in Pakistan. And Raheel Sharif did manage it well, but you can’t say our jawans didn’t die there due to Hiluxs and unarmored trucks either, it wasn’t The generals fault, it was just the situation of the country.
it’s the people that are at fault for this inaction, and in part the government and opposition too. They are not supporting the military like they did in 2014. Their interests are divided among their own political goals. NS and PMLN haven’t helped recently with this either. I’m sure the military leadership takes some blame too but when you look at the bigger picture it’s not just them. It’s all of Pakistan that’s at fault, and our enemies are exploiting this to try to bring back that ideology of terrorism that we uprooted in 2014-2016. We need that unity back. The military needs that support so it can be pushed to conduct these OPs.
It’s all a complicated mess of things that can be talked about at length but I think that’s beyond the scope of this post. But in short, the people have already started to take this peace for granted where they aren’t the ones getting attacked. Only the soldiers. So they’re not noticing how bad this could get, Pakistanis and humans in general have a habit of not taking action until things hit rock bottom, i hope this time the people, the government and the military will not let it reach that. Once they stop bickering among themselves and unite to fight and finish this war then we’ll get somewhere.
These are also just words but I hope it helps some people see just his complex things are behind what seems to be “just another attack”
And to address the second concern, let it be known that the jawans of the PA know their loyalties, they know their jobs and it’s dangers and their morale has not and will not take a hit from such cowardly attacks. There’s a reason this military is so robust. While the concerns from people are obviously genuine, they should be assured that the jawans will always stay the same. There won’t be any problems with low morale, disloyalty or mutiny. As many issues as we have, we’re still strong in some regards.
However your concern about the common people losing faith and morale is completely genuine, and the military brass does need to win back the people’s support and trust and give them hope before it’s too late and they stop supporting the military altogether, but again, the people need to actually support the military together first for the military to be able to do such a thing. A countries military and its people are after all dependent on each other’s support, this is just another example of that.
This has been a very wordy post and I hope I did it justice. I’m again sorry for any harsh words I might have used in my previous posts, I do not mean to insult or call out anyone personally and im thankful for the positive response and that you took the time to understand my point. I am always open to correction and criticism as my knowledge of these topics is still pretty limited.
IA our forces and nation will come out stronger from this. Pakistan zindabad.
