The U.S. military is developing a plan to send about 100 American trainers to work with a Pakistani paramilitary force in the fight against Al Qaeda and other extremist groups in Pakistan’s tribal areas, U.S. defense officials said.
Pakistan has ruled out allowing U.S. combat troops to fight Al Qaeda and Taliban militants in the tribal areas. But Pakistani leaders have privately indicated that they would welcome additional American trainers to provide new skills to their soldiers, whose army was tailored to fight a conventional land war against India.
Even though the training program would unfold over several months, it is being disclosed at a time of heightened operations in the unruly tribal areas along the Afghan border. At least eight people suspected of being militants were killed Thursday in a missile attack on a house used for training in the area.
For several years, small teams of U.S. Special Operations forces have trained their Pakistani counterparts in counterinsurgency. But the 40-page classified plan now under review at the U.S. Central Command to help train the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force of about 85,000 recruited from ethnic groups on the border, would significantly increase the size and scope of the U.S. training role.
The U.S. personnel initially would be restricted to training compounds but with Pakistani consent could eventually accompany troops on missions “to the point of contact” with militants, as American trainers now do with Iraqi troops, a senior U.S. defense official said.
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Britain is considering a similar training mission in Pakistan, officials said. A spokesman at the British Embassy in Washington declined to comment.
“The U.S. is bringing in a small number of trainers to assist Pakistan in their efforts to improve training of the Frontier Corps,” Elizabeth Colton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, said in an e-mail. “The U.S. trainers will be primarily focused on assisting the Pakistan cadre who will do the actual training of the Frontier Corps troops.”
Colton declined to specify how many U.S. trainers would participate or where their bases would be. But other defense officials said the number of trainers could grow to about 100.
Until now, U.S. officials have worked closely with President Pervez Musharraf on counterterrorism, including training programs. The landslide victory by Pakistan’s opposition parties in last month’s parliamentary elections adds a degree of complication and confusion to any long-term military planning of this sort because it is unclear to what extent new leaders such as Asif Ali Zardari, head of the victorious Pakistan People’s Party and the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, will embrace those policies.
U.S. officials also are taking a number of other steps in Pakistan. At the request of Pakistan’s new army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the Central Command two weeks ago sent a four-person intelligence team, led by a lieutenant colonel, to work closely with Pakistani intelligence officers in Islamabad.
The United States also is helping to create coordination centers just across the border in Afghanistan, where Afghan, Pakistani and U.S. officials can share intelligence about Islamic extremist groups in the tribal areas.