Terrorists have struck in Quetta, Lahore and Peshawar against state enforcers of law and order. Jamaat ul Ahrar has claimed responsibility and released a video of its aims and objectives of targeting state functionaries and secular media practitioners. The government has responded by accusing the Afghan intelligence agencies of harbouring and even sponsoring such terrorist outfits. In turn, Kabul continues to accuse Pakistan of harbouring and even sheltering the Haqqani network of Afghan Taliban that has laid Afghanistan low. Clearly, proxy wars in the region have reached a new high with no conflict resolution mechanism in sight.
There are other complicating factors. A terrorist alert issued by the Punjab government claims that Pakistani extremists who went off to fight in Iraq and Syria are returning to Pakistan to fuel IS activities here. Then there are the Punjabi jihadis (who split from their parent bodies during the Musharraf era when he closed the jihadi tap and offered “out-of-the-box” solutions for Kashmir) and joined the Tehreek i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who have veered towards the IS just as many Afghan Taliban groups have split from the current Taliban leadership and proclaimed themselves as IS. The Jamaat ul Ahrar is an offshoot of these groups with links to both Afghan intelligence and the Pakistani Taliban headed by Mallah Fazlullah who is based in north Afghanistan not far from the border with Pakistan.
As if the threat from these groups hasn’t been sufficiently grasped, a new danger is lurking in the folds of these non-state actors. The recent lid on Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Tayba and Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammed under pressure from India, America and China may precipitate new splinter groups that are more inclined towards hard-core militancy against the Pakistani state than their parent bodies which are focused on India. In that case, we shall have a deadly threat from both external and internal elements.
Unfortunately, the organs of the state and government are hard pressed to tackle and uproot these diverse forms of terrorism. It all began in the 1980s when the Pakistanis and Americans created the Mujahideen to expel the USSR from Afghanistan. After the Soviets were ousted, the Mujahideen first fought against the pro-Soviet Kabul regimes and scuttled them one after another, then fell apart over the spoils of victory and created space for the Taliban to emerge as the unifying force that sent them packing. The Pakistani state then moved in to retool and reorient these fighters for the jihad to liberate Kashmir from India in the 1990s. When the Afghan Taliban were routed from Kabul by America after 9/11 and accommodated in safe havens inside FATA, the stage was set in the 2000s for the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban and subsequently the Punjabi Taliban and their various offshoot terrorist outfits.
For a long time, the Pakistani state dithered over definitions of good Taliban (Afghans) and bad Taliban (Pakistanis). Then, when alarm bells began to ring in Islamabad of the bad Taliban encroaching upon Swat and parts of KP, the military went into action, clearing Swat in 2007 under General Pervez Musharraf, South Waziristan in 2011-12 under General Ashfaq Kayani and finally North Waziristan in 2015-, 16 under General Raheel Sharif.
Unfortunately, however, this strategy has rebounded on Pakistan. The bad Taliban of Pakistan have taken refuge in Afghanistan and joined forces with the good Taliban of Afghanistan. More significantly, they have become susceptible to influence and manipulation by the Afghan government and its anti-Pakistan and pro-India intelligence agencies. In other words, if the Pakistani state has tried to leverage the jihadis against India and Haqqani network and Afghan Taliban against Kabul, India and Afghanistan are now leveraging Baloch separatists, Punjabi Taliban and Pakistani Taliban against Islamabad. While the three countries battle it out with proxies, the proxies are becoming stronger and beginning to pose a bigger threat to both Pakistan and Afghanistan than ever before. This is a good environment for IS to exploit and take root in the region.
The main cause of all this is Pakistan’s attempt to counter India’s hegemonic designs in the region by trying to establish leverage in Afghanistan through the Afghan Mujahideen and then Afghan Taliban and in Kashmir though the Punjabi jihadi groups. In the process, however, Afghanistan has been ravaged by civil war and become hostile to Pakistan; Kashmir has been bloodied and the option of joining Pakistan has been drowned out by overwhelming calls for independence; and now Pakistan itself faces a direct and existential threat from various forms of radical Islamism that have spawned these non-state actors and proxy wars.
The National Action Plan, even with the best of cooperation between the civilian government and national security military establishment, is helpless in the face of this threat. A pre-requisite to tackling the internal problem of terrorism is to tackle the external environment that nurtures these terrorists. Unfortunately, there is no sign of out-of-the-box thinking vis a vis war or peace with India and Afghanistan.
There are other complicating factors. A terrorist alert issued by the Punjab government claims that Pakistani extremists who went off to fight in Iraq and Syria are returning to Pakistan to fuel IS activities here. Then there are the Punjabi jihadis (who split from their parent bodies during the Musharraf era when he closed the jihadi tap and offered “out-of-the-box” solutions for Kashmir) and joined the Tehreek i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who have veered towards the IS just as many Afghan Taliban groups have split from the current Taliban leadership and proclaimed themselves as IS. The Jamaat ul Ahrar is an offshoot of these groups with links to both Afghan intelligence and the Pakistani Taliban headed by Mallah Fazlullah who is based in north Afghanistan not far from the border with Pakistan.
As if the threat from these groups hasn’t been sufficiently grasped, a new danger is lurking in the folds of these non-state actors. The recent lid on Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Tayba and Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammed under pressure from India, America and China may precipitate new splinter groups that are more inclined towards hard-core militancy against the Pakistani state than their parent bodies which are focused on India. In that case, we shall have a deadly threat from both external and internal elements.
Unfortunately, the organs of the state and government are hard pressed to tackle and uproot these diverse forms of terrorism. It all began in the 1980s when the Pakistanis and Americans created the Mujahideen to expel the USSR from Afghanistan. After the Soviets were ousted, the Mujahideen first fought against the pro-Soviet Kabul regimes and scuttled them one after another, then fell apart over the spoils of victory and created space for the Taliban to emerge as the unifying force that sent them packing. The Pakistani state then moved in to retool and reorient these fighters for the jihad to liberate Kashmir from India in the 1990s. When the Afghan Taliban were routed from Kabul by America after 9/11 and accommodated in safe havens inside FATA, the stage was set in the 2000s for the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban and subsequently the Punjabi Taliban and their various offshoot terrorist outfits.
For a long time, the Pakistani state dithered over definitions of good Taliban (Afghans) and bad Taliban (Pakistanis). Then, when alarm bells began to ring in Islamabad of the bad Taliban encroaching upon Swat and parts of KP, the military went into action, clearing Swat in 2007 under General Pervez Musharraf, South Waziristan in 2011-12 under General Ashfaq Kayani and finally North Waziristan in 2015-, 16 under General Raheel Sharif.
Unfortunately, however, this strategy has rebounded on Pakistan. The bad Taliban of Pakistan have taken refuge in Afghanistan and joined forces with the good Taliban of Afghanistan. More significantly, they have become susceptible to influence and manipulation by the Afghan government and its anti-Pakistan and pro-India intelligence agencies. In other words, if the Pakistani state has tried to leverage the jihadis against India and Haqqani network and Afghan Taliban against Kabul, India and Afghanistan are now leveraging Baloch separatists, Punjabi Taliban and Pakistani Taliban against Islamabad. While the three countries battle it out with proxies, the proxies are becoming stronger and beginning to pose a bigger threat to both Pakistan and Afghanistan than ever before. This is a good environment for IS to exploit and take root in the region.
The main cause of all this is Pakistan’s attempt to counter India’s hegemonic designs in the region by trying to establish leverage in Afghanistan through the Afghan Mujahideen and then Afghan Taliban and in Kashmir though the Punjabi jihadi groups. In the process, however, Afghanistan has been ravaged by civil war and become hostile to Pakistan; Kashmir has been bloodied and the option of joining Pakistan has been drowned out by overwhelming calls for independence; and now Pakistan itself faces a direct and existential threat from various forms of radical Islamism that have spawned these non-state actors and proxy wars.
The National Action Plan, even with the best of cooperation between the civilian government and national security military establishment, is helpless in the face of this threat. A pre-requisite to tackling the internal problem of terrorism is to tackle the external environment that nurtures these terrorists. Unfortunately, there is no sign of out-of-the-box thinking vis a vis war or peace with India and Afghanistan.