FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT Pakistan's armed forces have suffered another acute embarrassment just three weeks after the US found and killed Osama bin Laden in a military town near the national capital. On May 22nd a handful of Pakistani Taliban militants stormed a naval airbase, destroying two advanced, US-supplied aircraft. It took hundreds of security personnel nearly 16 hours to kill the infiltrators and retake the base. The incident raises troubling questions about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, but it does not mark a major tactical shift on the part of the Pakistani Taliban. The militant attack on the Mehran naval airbase near Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, was nothing if not bold. According to most reports there were just six gunmen, armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, who used ropes and ladders to scale the walls of the base. The attackers destroyed two US-supplied maritime-surveillance planes that were delivered to Pakistan only a few months ago. Each P-3C Orion plane was worth around US$35m. Up to 15 security personnel were reportedly killed in the hours-long battle to evict the militants. Subsequently, the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, citing revenge for bin Laden's killing. In a final twist, it appears that there were both US and Chinese military contractors or officers at the base. However, there have been no confirmed reports that personnel from either country were injured in the raid. The Mehran attack raises three troubling questions. First, if insurgents could easily storm a major airbase, are Pakistan's nuclear weapons really as safe as the government insists? This was not the first time that the Pakistani Taliban has demonstrated an ability to mount brazen attacks on key military installations; a similarly audacious attack succeeded in penetrating the military's headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009. Pakistan's military maintains that these incidents should not cast doubt on the security of its nuclear weapons, but such worries are hard to dismiss outright. For one thing, several recent militant attacks appeared to suggest that inside knowledge of the facilities' vulnerabilities was available to the infiltrators. In addition, Pakistan is thought to be developing tactical nuclear weapons as a deterrent against India's conventionally superior military. By design, such weapons are be smaller, more numerous and more mobile than traditional nuclear bombs—and are therefore more difficult to safeguard. Second, will the fallout from the Mehran attack cause further damage to US-Pakistan ties? On the eve of the incident, the allies had just about patched up the damage caused by the US's unilateral raid to kill al-Qaida's leader. It seems unlikely that there will be a further deterioration in relations now, given that ties are already highly strained. However, the destruction of US-supplied military aircraft worth millions of dollars could add to the voices calling for a re-appraisal of the US's massive transfers of money and arms to Pakistan's armed forces. Although the US's concerns on this front are largely about Pakistan's perceived duplicitousness in the bin Laden affair, the latest incident will do little to reassure US critics of Pakistan's competence as a military partner. In addition, while the attack was focused on destroying military equipment, it raises the possibility that militants could capture less sophisticated but still deadly military equipment and use it to wreck havoc against military or civilian targets. Third, does the attack herald a tactical shift by domestic Pakistani terrorists? Some commentators have suggested that it was novel for the attack to target military assets rather than people. However, the Pakistani Taliban has routinely mounted at least two kinds of missions: those designed to kill as many civilians as possible, and attacks on military bases or equipment. For example, militants have repeatedly ambushed convoys carrying NATO supplies to Afghanistan. What is new about the latest attack is not that military assets were targeted, but that the militants were successful in destroying vastly expensive hardware that symbolised the US-Pakistan alliance.
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