Pakistan : Waziristan operation: is it too late?

Syed Kamran Hashmi

As embarrassing as it was, Pakistanis, having no clue of such a nexus, wished to fight the war against terrorism, united as one nation just like the US did after 9/11, but there was no one to fight for them.

While talking to the BBC last week about the North Waziristan operation, General Asim Bajwa, the director general of the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), disclosed that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had lost the capability of launching coordinated assaults. “Because terrorists have been scattered, they are only able to carry out random attacks,” he boasted. “The second level leadership of the banned TTP has been either killed or arrested during the operation,” he added. Rendering optimism about our future, this statement comes straight from the horse’s mouth and must not be ignored. It reinforces the commitment of our armed forces towards asserting the writ of the state even in those areas of the tribal belt, if need to be, where it was never established in the first place.

Not too long ago, there was a time when fear possessed the hearts of Pakistanis. Terrorists had struck all our major cities one after another, killing tens of people and wounding hundreds in every attack. From Peshawar to Karachi, the streets were packed with the fallen bodies of Pakistani men, women and children, their lives inexpensive and their blood dispensable. Yet the people in power did not show any resolve to bring the culprits to book, a strategy that allowed them to literally convert Pakistan into a slaughterhouse.

What made our reputation worse was the general impression both in the local and international press that the deep state and terrorist groups were in bed with each other — if not completely then at least on certain issues — even when the military installations and the offices of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) were targeted. As embarrassing as it was, Pakistanis, having no clue of such a nexus, wished to fight the war against terrorism, united as one nation just like the US did after 9/11, but there was no one to fight for them or, if nothing else, at least to try to keep them united.

Right wing political parties did everything they could to disunite the people. I am not sure why, although there are theories about them getting these instructions from Rawalpindi too, they always chose one of the following three options to misguide the people: deliberately hide the ground realities from the people, adulterate the facts with their personal opinions or simply deny them while looking the other way because what lay in front of them was too onerous to confront or too odious to be shared with ordinary Pakistanis. Often, they relied on lies about the local origins of most terrorists, their agenda to takeover the state apparatus and their association with international terror organisations like al Qaeda. In essence, they played an extremely divisive role. Further confusing their right leaning constituency, who although wanted to fight but was much more willing to identify the US as the enemy instead of a local militia, these politicians used terrorism as a political slogan to further spur anti-US sentiment, to score political points against their liberal yet more realistic rivals and to gain short term popular support.

Today, a few months have gone by since the operation began in North Waziristan. The military’s grip is firm on the undertaking, its morale high with the support of the nation and its death toll low because of superior technology and excellent planning, They have killed more than 1,000 alleged terrorists and they are satisfied with the speed and the extent of their victory. Notwithstanding that the top tier leadership of the TTP has managed to slip out of Miranshah into Afghanistan probably, we must admit that it will be hard for the terrorists now to recruit, train and motivate enough foot soldiers to launch new attacks in the battleground of Pakistan. If we all agree on this point, and believe that the backbone of the organisational structure of the TTP has been shattered by military onslaughts, then the real question we have to ask ourselves is not only how long it will take for the internally displaced persons (IDPs) to go back to their homes, what the cost of keeping them in relief camps is or what our strategy to rehabilitate them into their home districts is but to ask why we sacrificed 50,000 people — all those men, women and children who will never be able to reach their homes back to loved ones and why we waited for so long. I am seriously not ready to think that the people in power waited for almost a decade because they wanted to build a consensus or they believed in giving peace a chance or even that they held back to see the outcome of the dialogue process. They never wait, we all know that, nor do they care much about building a consensus or think high of negotiations led by the civilian authorities. And if they really wished for the nation to support them, they can modulate a consensus in a matter of a few hours, what to talk about days or weeks? Remember: it took them 15 days and one short video of a woman being flogged by the Taliban in public to bring the whole country onto one page for the Swat operation.

The question becomes even more significant when the operation in North Waziristan has not turned out to be a huge challenge for the military. Neither the death toll has been very high, as we have discussed, nor has the economy suffered because of the intervention. On the contrary, if there had been less political turmoil in Islamabad, the economy, according to some estimates, would have been growing at a faster pace than it has been in the last two or three years.

We also need to ask ourselves why the nation is still kept in the dark about this delay. Why did no one know about the obstacles? And if they have erred in their assessment — a mistake that has cost thousands of lives during the process — how can the nation make them accountable?