Landmark US hearings on Balochistan

On Wednesday the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on Balochistan, Pakistan's restive province and, some say, a country denied its statehood. The committee heard detailed evidence of human rights abuses and hundreds of unexplained killings in the province - mostly attibuted to the Pakistan Army and the ISI, but some also carried out by Baloch nationalists - from Ali Dayan Hasan from Human Rights Watch and T Kumar  from Amnesty International. 
Several members of Congress from both sides of the political divide spoke in support of Balochi independence. Defence analyst Ralph Peters said it was an “incontrovertible fact” that Balochistan was an “occupied territory  which never willingly acceded to Pakistan and now does not wish to be a part of Pakistan".  "If a plebiscite or referendum is to be held tomorrow, it would vote to leave Pakistan," he said. Dr M Hossainbor, an American Baloch lawyer, said that Balochis were natural allies of the United States and that an independent Balochistan would offer naval bases to the UN Navy.
Christine Fair, an associate professor at Washington's Georgetown University and someone who is generally well informed about Pakistan, appears to have a blind spot when it comes to Balochistan. Her useful potted history of the province concludes by saying that the Baloch nationalists should put down their weapons. She adds: "the state needs to abandon its preferred militarised conflict resolution techniques in preference to engaging legitimate grievances...". By "preferred militarised conflict resolution techniques" is she referring to the mass murder of intellectuals in Balochistan that has been happening over the last two or three years undisturbed by any comments by US leaders, who continue to turn a blind eye? Come on Christine, you can do better than that!

Failure of Counterinsurgency in Pakistan

A study on Counterinsurgency in Pakistan published by the Rand Corporation and written by Seth Jones and Christine Fair argues that despite some successes since 2001, militant groups continue to present a significant threat to Pakistan, the United States and several other countries.
Numerous militant networks ( Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) exist in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Pakistan has failed to develop an effective population-centric counterinsurgency strategy to combat them.
The authors add that Pakistan's decision to support some militant groups has been counterproductive and it has still not entirely broken with this strategy. The Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps have a mixed record in terms of clearing and holding territory, as illustrated by Operation al Mizan in South Waziristan in 2004. Operations have improved since then, but weaknesses remain.
The lack of an official counterinsurgency doctrine remains a "lingering challenge", while the lack of support for the police has had a detrimental effect on anti-terrorist operations.
The authors argue that four components are critical to adopting a more effective strategy: a population-centric approach based on a more central role for the police; the abandonment of militancy as a tool of its foreign and domestic policy; the reduction by the USA of its reliance on Pakistan, for example by seeking alternative routes to supply its troops in Afghanistan; the US should withhold some aid until Pakistan makes progress.

Neo-con thoughts on Afghanistan-Pakistan

David Gartenstein-Ross and Clifford May have edited a collection of essays on Afghanistan and Pakistan for the neo-con Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The Afghanistan-Pakistan Theater: Militant Islam, Security and Stability includes essays on religious militancy in Pakistan's military, the US Army's Human Terrain System, an assesment of Pakistan's peace agreements with militants in Waziristan from 2004-2008 and several others, by writers including Hassan Abbas, Christine Fair and Sebastian Gorka.
Some of the essays are not bad, but all this from a pro-Iraq war organisation that is islamophobic and whose anti-Iran, anti-Hamas, anti-Hezbollah views, according to some commentators, differ little from those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party.