'Pak army's desire to kill Indians, spare Pakistanis makes them ineffective against Taliban'

Lahore, June 30 (ANI): Pakistan Army's desire to kill Indians and spare Pakistanis is making them ineffective against the Pak-Taliban, senior political scientist Christine Fair has said.

The Daily Times quoted Fair of the RAND Corporation, as saying that several Pakistani officers had told her they had joined the army to kill Indians, not Pakistanis.

The army's officers are themselves unsure if they can successfully oust the Taliban, and whether they can hold the area for long, Fair wrote in a Wall Street Journal report.

Hence, she said, the Pak army could not be used in the war on terror.

She also noted that the US should not have spent most of 12 billion dollars trying to aid the Pakistan Army, instead the aid should have been used to improve the country's police force.

She added that the Pakistan Army's "sledgehammer attempt" to expel the Taliban, flattening villages and forcing more than three million people to flee, had also shown the army has resisted developing an effective counter-insurgency capability to secure the local population.

Referring to the killing of 400 Pakistani policemen by the Taliban every year, she said the police force was a greater threat to the insurgents than the Army.

"The police make for easy targets because they are outgunned, under-resourced, inadequately equipped and poorly trained," she said, noting that several had fled to protect their families because they don't have the same lucrative death benefits as army personnel. (ANI)