Counterterrorism Challenges!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pakistan's security forces are struggling to confront these domestic militants. As this Backgrounder points out, efforts are underway to reform the forces but challenges remain both in terms of willingness to fight some of these militant groups as well as capabilities. Security forces, especially the army and the police , have increasingly become the target for the militant groups. In October 2009, militants attacked the army headquarters in Rawalpindi and held around forty people hostage for over 20 hours much to the army's embarrassment.
These attacks have heralded a new period in army and ISI relations with many of these militant groups, say analysts. Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, says since the bloody encounter between Pakistan's security forces and militant Islamic students in Islamabad's Red Mosque in 2007, there has been a pattern of some of these groups previously under state patronage, breaking away from the state. He says Pakistan's security establishment is now trying to figure out how to control them.
Most analysts believe that even though the Pakistani army and the ISI are now more willing to go after militant groups, they continue some form of alliance with groups they want to use as a strategic hedge against India and Afghanistan. But Pakistan's security establishment denies these charges. In October 2009, ISI Chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha said: "The ISI is a professional agency and does not have links (Daily Times) with any militant outfit including the Taliban."
In particular, U.S. officials would like Pakistan to crackdown on the leadership of the Afghan Taliban believed to be based in Quetta and two major factions of the Afghan insurgency led by veteran Afghan warlords, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. These, U.S. officials believe, are actively engaged in supplying fighters in Afghanistan. Analysts believe these groups do not engage in direct attacks against the Pakistani state in lieu of political cover inside Pakistan. Pakistan denies these charges. However, Coll says, there is some shift in Pakistan's strategy of supporting groups against India and to project influence in Afghanistan. "There is more debate and more ambivalence," he says. "Overall, the Pakistani establishment is moving in the right direction but it will take a very long time to undo the pattern that has been established so far."