I personally hope that the F.C. goes away altogether. Do you have an F.C. in the east facing India?
Your knowledge in this is inadequate and your view inappropriate. The FC can't 'go away altogether' anymore than the Punjab/Sindh Rangers or the Balochistan FC can. Contrary to your (no doubt heavily Indian influenced) belief, the Pakistan Army is not tasked with the guarding of Pakistan's international borders. It would be the Rangers and Frontier Core who are expected to burden that responsibility (like the BSF are in India). Obviously the infiltration of the tribal territories constituted a bit of an exception in that regard given the nature of the terrain, of the enemy involved and the international political ramifications. However the Army, as to be expected, is tasked, trained and orientated in large scale offensive and defensive operations (as is the case with all countries residing in a sufficiently 'rough' neighborhoods).
This is an organization that by it's tribal/ethnic composition is incapable of conducting actions and rendering decisions based upon nat'l interests.
Perhaps you didn't know this but the FC (and Rangers) are lead by officers from the regular Pakistani Army. It is considered an unglamorous posting by some officers no doubt, but I reckon that bit has been subject to change given the increasing prospects of combat and the gradual upgrading of the FC's capabilities, in which I hope the US has genuinely played a significant role and will continue to do so. Tasking the regular Pakistan Army to counterinsurgency/guarding/holding operations will fatally erode our combat effectiveness by undermining our doctrines that focus on massed mobility and maneuverability involving armor and artillery support in-conjunction with air assets, among other things. The Indian Army discovered the effects of prolonged exposure and commitment to Anti-Guerrilla campaigns at their cost, we don’t intend on repeating their mistakes because least of all we can’t afford it. I suppose elements from Northern Command that specialize in mountain warfare, manning posts and patrolling along the LoC, etc can be put to effective use in the FATA region without too much capability compromise, but then like someone pointed most of them are Non-Sunnis from Gilgit and surrounding areas that would constitute more of these ethnic/religious problems. Most of our Army Corps are stationed in their peace time locations, which in turn are based on respective population densities in the provinces, locations of strategic import and proximity to potential threat patterns. These won’t change.
Your tendency to so casually dismiss the FC and their credentials is based more on uneducated stereotyping than on ground realities. For instance while you feel that the FC are incapable of conducting actions and rendering decisions based upon nat'l interests, you forget that they have sustained more casualties fighting in the WoT campaign than the Americans. So while you may feel free to ridicule their combat effectiveness and/or attrition rate vice versa your own no doubt formidably trained and equipped airborne troops, or mountain divisions or marines, it’s going to be much harder for you to dispute their loyalty or allegiance to Pakistan or to their officers. Deficiencies in the FC's performance can be rectified by induction of new and specialized training procedures and adequate equipment and weapons. That would be the appropriate course of action, and there is no denying we have a long way to go since let alone the FC, even the PA are obliged to ride around in ambush country on essentially-civilian unarmored pickup trucks while our American counterparts have constricted a vast chunk of their logistics, resupply and deployment operations to helicopters and the like. Forgive my little digression, but the point is we have a long way to go and a lot of potential yet to explore before getting ahead of ourselves and making sweeping crude and clumsy suggestions.
The FC is an old institution, it has served the British well and has been serving Pakistan well. They were adequate in keeping a lid on things in FATA before all this US invasion business sent everything to hell. We need them now to provide a local face and aspect to our military and development endeavors there and we’ll need them in the long term when things are settled and the inevitable PA withdrawal comes about.
I agree with your suggestion about FATA having to be reintegrated back into Pakistan proper. There should be no room for tribes and chaotically semi-autonomous regions in civilized nation. But this is a mammoth task and would be best envisioned in the long run. Furthermore it would be naïve to suggest that nation-integration can be achieve only through the deployment of corps and divisions worth of combat troops from half way across the country. That might be most counter-productive in more ways than just one. What we need now is for troops stationed there, especially local ones, to be given the sufficient resources, equipment and inspiration i.e. armored transports, armored fighting vehicles, transport helicopters, light weight artillery, infantry kits, better logistics and training, etc. There are severe inadequacies in all of the mentioned. They need to be tackled first. Presently we barely have resources for proper reconstruction of districts we occupy, we will hardly have the required funds available if we just double or triple the number of our combat troops and subsequent deployment and maintenance costs. There are severe social, ethnic, religious, political complications involved which most of us won’t understand, ignoring these would be optimism to the point of stupidity. Age old tribal customs and mentality won’t just get wished away by optimistic investment plans, anymore than they’d disappear because a brigade HQ was deployed in a tribe-man’s town. The PA will be instrumental in bringing the tribal people into the fold no doubt, as will the FC. The Army has been trying long enough though, even before 9/11 but we’ve always run into problems. But America’s involvement on the other side and subsequent conduct produced a political dispensation violently hostile to any plan the PA might have had of bringing FATA into a more nationalist disposition.
Militants need to be crushed, a lot more needs to be done. Halt in callous and undeniably unpopular American drone attacks, acceleration in the arms and equipment procurement pipe line must be encouraged for the PA/FC, more cooperation and more trust, more proactive and tenacious military campaigns on both sides (and in Pakistan’s case transfer of the appropriate capabilities enhancing equipment), better tackling of ideological, political obstacles in Pakistan (for which we would require room to maneuver which can be accomplished by an halt to overt American interference in Pakistani affairs)…to name but a few. But asking us to re-home our Corps or scrap the FC is something even General Petraeus won’t have the audacity to do.
Like I said, just wait a few weeks.
