In the wake of the North Waziristan operation, the army chief’s ‘successful’ US visit and the military’s insistence that ‘all forms’ of terrorism will be taken on, reputed analysts have put their reputation on the line by saying that the country’s support to militancy is a thing of the past.
If these analysts were the usual pro-GHQ, ex-forces suspects, one would see their ‘assessment’ as a mere reiteration of their long-held positions. But they weren’t. They were eminent journalist-authors known and respected for their independent point of view.
Among the signs of change, they point to the killing of Adnan Shukrijuma in a North Waziristan raid by Pakistani troops and the positive vibes emerging from the visit to Islamabad by the new Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and his talks with the host country’s civil and military leadership.
These developments were followed by the handing over to Islamabad of a senior Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan liaison man Latif Mehsud who was being held in Afghanistan for several months after being snatched from an NDS (Afghan intelligence) convoy by the US forces and the reported air raid on the Afghan hideout of TTP head Mullah Fazlullah who reportedly had a narrow escape.
That the Pakistani forces had finally made it impossible for the Haqqani network to operate from their years-long safe havens in North Waziristan and also similar confidence-building measures from across the Durand Line were cause enough for many knowledgeable analysts to talk in terms of a new beginning.
An indication of change will be visible if Pakistan facilitates contacts between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban.
However well-founded they thought their optimism was, those seeing things differently also had a raft of equally weighty factors to point out, starting from what many saw as a Freudian slip by the prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz who asked (and later denied) why would Pakistan target militant groups which don’t threaten it.
To me, it isn’t clear how plugged into the current intelligence set-up is former ISI boss retired Lt-Gen Asad Durrani but the world sees him as very close to the policy formulation-implementation arm of the defence establishment and his comments at a King’s College London gathering on Afghanistan were cited as another argument that no change had happened.
That the recent weeks have seen a spike in Taliban attacks in Afghanistan in general and capital Kabul in particular was enough to convince the critics of Pakistan’s policy to say it was business as usual for GHQ as its influence was being exerted once again by its proxies in an attempt to assert its dominance in the wake of the US-led forces ‘drawdown’.
To many Afghan experts an irrefutable indication of change will be when and if Pakistani authorities facilitate contacts between the Ashraf Ghani government and the Taliban leadership being hosted here as it would suggest that GHQ was happy with the possibility of a broad-based and representative government in Kabul rather than a satellite set-up.
The truth is even if Gen Raheel Sharif and his team have decided that the country’s national security interests are jeopardised, rather than served, by non-state surrogates this changed thinking isn’t going to manifest itself overnight.
For example, one need only look at how difficult and dangerous the process of ‘mainstreaming’ those militant groups is proving to be which the state still chooses not to crush using force or just finds itself incapable of taking on and defeating.
Whether the ‘patriotic’ Jamaatud Dawa’s Lahore convention was an attempt to thumb a nose at the renegade militant who opposes the state and has taken up arms against it or merely to show the eastern neighbour what might follow if the escalation along the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region continues is immaterial.
What does count is, like the upsurge in attacks in Afghanistan, Hafiz Saeed’s ‘Ghazwa-i-Hind’ call was accompanied by a bloody attack on an Indian occupation force camp in the Valley allegedly by Lashkar-e-Taiba in which a number of soldiers were killed.
In the past, India and Pakistan have come close to full-blown conflict when Pakistan-backed militant groups have mounted terror attacks against the Indian parliament and after that on Mumbai with the latter exacting a heavy toll on civilian lives.
The ultimate nightmare scenario will be, and one shudders to think of the consequences, another Mumbai-like attack in India which is traced to groups based in Pakistan. With a belligerent Hindu nationalist Modi in charge who knows what might happen.
Also, with the recently vitiated atmosphere between India and Pakistan one isn’t certain what kinds of lines of communication remain open between the civil and military top brass of the two countries. One recalls with horror that a hoax call to Pakistan’s president from an Indian number during the Mumbai terror attack led to such escalation that the threat of deploying Taliban to fight India was also made by none other than the country’s intelligence chief then.
Therefore, Pakistan’s fight against extremism and militancy has to be a finely-balanced and well-calibrated exercise as those at the receiving end, fearing erosion of their power, even possible extinction may decide to lash out. Pakistani policymakers and the civil-military leadership need to have complete clarity on their immediate and long-term goals, so much so that they are able to communicate these to the world in unambiguous terms.
And in such unambiguous terms that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind at home and abroad about how legitimate and above board the country’s quest to further its national security objectives will be which will also be vital to regional peace and prosperity.
This will ensure any attack by possibly desperate militants to hijack the agenda is seen as what it is: the tail wagging the dog. Not the other way around.
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