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Pakistan need new weapons for counter insurgency: says ex-PAF officer
LONDON, Feb 15 (APP)- A former Pakistan Air Force senior officer has called on the West to provide his country with modern weapons for dealing with counter insurgency and to avoid collateral damage.
Air Marshal (retd) Masood Akhtar was speaking at a seminar The Role of Air Power in Counter-Insurgency Pakistans Experience in the Tribal Region at the International Institute of Strategic Studies here on Thursday evening.
He said Pakistans forces are battling a Taliban insurgency in the tribal areas in NWFP in which PAF is playing an important role.
However, he added that helicopters rather than fixed-wing warplanes have been found more useful in these hilly areas.
Air Marshal Masood who has been a fighter pilot for 35 years and with over 2500 hours of flying experience on a variety of PAF fighter and training aircraft, said the Air Force had been using this air power with caution and restrain in order to prevent collateral damage.
He was of the view that precision guided ammunitions were better suited for PAFs requirement rather than thousand pounder or five hundred pounder bombs which cause greater collateral damage.
If we are provided with smaller and smarter bombs, we could easily avoid unintended damage to civilian life or property, he said.
For the air power to be successful in counter-insurgency, he observed, a lot depends on good ground intelligence because any wrong information could lead to unwarranted damages.
Air Marshal Masood who also served as a Commandant, Air War College, during the course of his service with PAF, noted that damages to civilian life and property has resulted into a backlash which has been evident by the recent attacks on the PAF personnels by the suicide bombers.
He also explained the circumstances which led to the rise of Al-Qaeda and Taliban and said such extremists groups emerged as a result of the global politics in which Pakistan, willy nilly, had been caught up with and paying a heavy price.
The Air Marshal said during Soviet Union 10 years of occupation of Afghanistan, PAF had brought down a dozen Soviet and Afghan Air Force planes found in violation of Pakistan territory.
The retired Air Force officer said Pakistan was pushed into thinking itself as a citadel of Islam as a consequence of the Cold War in which the Wests primary motive was to defeat Communism of Soviet Union and stop its spread.
As a result the message of founding fathers Muhammad Ali Jinnah and poet-philosopher Allama Iqbal of a tolerant and egalitarian society with people enjoying equal social, political and economical rights and opportunities was set aside and lost.
He said both Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar had used globalisation to the hilt and achieved their objectives. He stressed the need for launching political, economic and social campaigns in the tribal areas to win the hearts and minds of the people and wean them from extremist ideology.
Air Marshal Masood called for overhauling the education system in Pakistan with greater focus on providing an effective primary education to replace religious seminaries. Only a well established and efficient unified education system could provide a basis and sense of a nationhood., he asserted.
He pointed out the difficulties of a fighting an enemy without a face and thought that Pakistan will have to fight such non-state factors for a long time.
Responding to questions, he said there is a reluctance on the part of the West to give Pakistan sophisticated weapons while the country is averse to allowing NATO troops to operate inside its borders.
In the current regional scenario, he noted that India has behaved sensibly and has not tried to take advantage of Pakistans predicament. The Air Marshal said both Pakistan and India have realised that military was no solution to Kashmir issue and have started the peace process.
The meeting was chaired by a former RAF bomber pilot Andrew Brookes, a IISS Aerospace analyst.
LONDON, Feb 15 (APP)- A former Pakistan Air Force senior officer has called on the West to provide his country with modern weapons for dealing with counter insurgency and to avoid collateral damage.
Air Marshal (retd) Masood Akhtar was speaking at a seminar The Role of Air Power in Counter-Insurgency Pakistans Experience in the Tribal Region at the International Institute of Strategic Studies here on Thursday evening.
He said Pakistans forces are battling a Taliban insurgency in the tribal areas in NWFP in which PAF is playing an important role.
However, he added that helicopters rather than fixed-wing warplanes have been found more useful in these hilly areas.
Air Marshal Masood who has been a fighter pilot for 35 years and with over 2500 hours of flying experience on a variety of PAF fighter and training aircraft, said the Air Force had been using this air power with caution and restrain in order to prevent collateral damage.
He was of the view that precision guided ammunitions were better suited for PAFs requirement rather than thousand pounder or five hundred pounder bombs which cause greater collateral damage.
If we are provided with smaller and smarter bombs, we could easily avoid unintended damage to civilian life or property, he said.
For the air power to be successful in counter-insurgency, he observed, a lot depends on good ground intelligence because any wrong information could lead to unwarranted damages.
Air Marshal Masood who also served as a Commandant, Air War College, during the course of his service with PAF, noted that damages to civilian life and property has resulted into a backlash which has been evident by the recent attacks on the PAF personnels by the suicide bombers.
He also explained the circumstances which led to the rise of Al-Qaeda and Taliban and said such extremists groups emerged as a result of the global politics in which Pakistan, willy nilly, had been caught up with and paying a heavy price.
The Air Marshal said during Soviet Union 10 years of occupation of Afghanistan, PAF had brought down a dozen Soviet and Afghan Air Force planes found in violation of Pakistan territory.
The retired Air Force officer said Pakistan was pushed into thinking itself as a citadel of Islam as a consequence of the Cold War in which the Wests primary motive was to defeat Communism of Soviet Union and stop its spread.
As a result the message of founding fathers Muhammad Ali Jinnah and poet-philosopher Allama Iqbal of a tolerant and egalitarian society with people enjoying equal social, political and economical rights and opportunities was set aside and lost.
He said both Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar had used globalisation to the hilt and achieved their objectives. He stressed the need for launching political, economic and social campaigns in the tribal areas to win the hearts and minds of the people and wean them from extremist ideology.
Air Marshal Masood called for overhauling the education system in Pakistan with greater focus on providing an effective primary education to replace religious seminaries. Only a well established and efficient unified education system could provide a basis and sense of a nationhood., he asserted.
He pointed out the difficulties of a fighting an enemy without a face and thought that Pakistan will have to fight such non-state factors for a long time.
Responding to questions, he said there is a reluctance on the part of the West to give Pakistan sophisticated weapons while the country is averse to allowing NATO troops to operate inside its borders.
In the current regional scenario, he noted that India has behaved sensibly and has not tried to take advantage of Pakistans predicament. The Air Marshal said both Pakistan and India have realised that military was no solution to Kashmir issue and have started the peace process.
The meeting was chaired by a former RAF bomber pilot Andrew Brookes, a IISS Aerospace analyst.
