FC to get over 18,000 sets of body armour

WASHINGTON: The Frontier Corps will get US body armour to bolster them in their fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the nation's ungoverned northwest provinces, according to a Pentagon official.
The US has pressed the government in Islamabad to wrest control of this area from the insurgents. The corps' 65,000 troops live there and are critical to this effort.
The US is shipping more than 18,000 sets of body armour to the corps, with the first delivery as early as next month, Army Colonel Brandon Denecke said in an interview. That is a significant increase over the roughly 400 sets given to Pakistan commando units and aircrews since 2001. The Frontier Corps "is widely viewed as being well-positioned to do the brunt of on-the-ground counterinsurgency fighting in western Pakistan," said Alan Kronstadt, a Pakistan analyst for the Congressional Research Service. "Such basic infantry equipment is considered crucial" if the corps "is to be transformed into an effective counterinsurgency force."
The corps is a federal paramilitary force recruited from the tribal areas and led by officers from the Pakistan army. A Pentagon report in April 2008 said the corps is under-trained, ill-equipped and "in many cases outgunned by their militant opponents". Kronstadt said the US focus now on the Frontier Corps "is major and will continue for some years". The Obama administration says the militants in Pakistan's mountainous tribal regions threaten the stability of the nuclear-armed nation and hamper the war effort by the US and Nato in neighbouring Afghanistan. In addition, al-Qaeda-linked fighters use bases there to plan attacks on the West, the US says.
President Barack Obama has said an aid package to Pakistan worth $1.5 billion a year would be conditional on the government tackling extremists. The armoured vests are just one element in the US effort to beef up Pakistan's forces as it moves against them. The Pentagon as early as next week plans to deliver to the Pakistan Army on a lease basis four Russian-made MI-17 transport helicopters owned by the US Army. The MI-17 is a medium-weight helicopter, capable of ferrying troops, performing medical evacuations and carrying out ground attacks. In addition, six containers of spare parts for Pakistan's fleet of 32 Cobra helicopters have arrived in Karachi and are being shipped overland to the Pakistan Army, Denecke said. Pakistan also is negotiating to have the US refurbish eight of its Cobras in the US, said Denecke, who handles Pakistan issues for the Pentagon's foreign military assistance agency. -