By Chidanand Rajghatta
The United States may well have subscribed to Pakistan's policy of "bad terrorists" (from its Afghan front, who mostly attack Pakistan and US) versus "good terrorists" (from West Punjab, who mostly attack India).
A defence authorization bill signed by President Barack Obama last week that provides for $1 billion in aid to Pakistan in 2015 conditions it on Islamabad taking steps to disrupt the Haqqani Network and eliminating safe havens of al-Qaida and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
However, it makes no mention of the Punjab-centric terror groups such as the Laskar-e-Taiba (LeT) aka Jamaat-ul-Dawa (JuD), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and others that are considered proxies of the Pakistani state.
A review of the 1640-page text of S.1847, formally known as the Carl Levin and Howard P 'Buck' McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, shows US emphasis on calling Pakistan to account for terrorist activity on its western flank, mainly through the Taliban, which impacts the US drawdown in Afghanistan.
It makes the $1 billion US aid contingent on Pakistan taking steps that have "demonstrated a commitment to ensuring that North Waziristan does not return to being a safe haven for the Haqqani network." It also seeks a description of any strategic security objectives that the US and Pakistan have agreed to pursue and an assessment of the effectiveness of any US security assistance to Pakistan to achieve such strategic objectives.
But missing from the legislation is any concern, let alone any conditions, about Pakistan's fostering of the Punjabi terror groups such as LeT that not only attacked Mumbai on 26/11 (an incident in which six Americans were also killed), but also the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian outfit that has killed hundreds of Pakistani Shias.
Both groups are patronized by Pakistan's military and political establishments, which derive their power from the country's heartland of west Punjab, much like the terror groups themselves.
A charitable explanation for the legislative oversight (or lack of it) maybe to take into account the broad and fleeting reference to "other militant extremist groups" in the text of the legislation. But in a remarkable coincidence, the Pakistan establishment began freeing its so-called "good terrorists" from Punjab even as President Obama signed the defense authorization bill on December 19. The easing up also followed the Pakistani army chief Gen Raheel Sharif's visit to Washington DC last month.
In a series of moves demonstrating the Pakistani establishment was easing up on its own terrorist proxies in return for acting on US concerns, the Pakistani courts first released 26/11 planner Zaki-ur Lakhvi from prison, temporarily holding him back following Indian outrage; Islamabad then dawdled over filing replies in court in the case against JuD chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and his deputy Hafiz Abdur Rehman Makki, saying it is yet to get response to its questions from the US; most recently, it released LeJ head Malik Ishaq, who is accused of scores of sectarian murders inside Pakistan, before extending his incarceration for two weeks following outrage within Pakistan.
All this time, it has made a big to-do over the Peshawar school attack being a turning point in its fight against terrorism, hanging some half dozen "bad terrorists" from the Taliban stock while taking the heat off Punjab-based terrorist groups. The country's ruling Punjabi elite, including the Prime Minister and the Army chief, have made grandiose statements about how Pakistan owes it to future generations to fight terrorism and how the days of terrorists are numbered etc.
Blood on the floor of the Peshawar school that Pakistani Taliban attacked and killed over 140 people including over 130 students.
In a speech earlier this week, Prime Minister Sharif promised to take action against all terrorist groups, including those from Punjab. He also promised to take measures against media sources that "empower terrorism."
But in a review of the Pakistani media, Tufail Ahmed, an analyst with the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), found that even as there was an upsurge in sentiment against jihadists in Pakistan's small liberal press (read by outsiders and elites), the larger, more powerful urdu media was blaming India and its intelligence agency RAW for the Peshawar bombing.
"Like in the Fall of Dhaka, India is involved in the Peshawar tragedy ..." the Jamaatud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, a darling of the Pakistani establishment, was quoted as saying: "The killers of innocent children in Peshawar do not have any connection to jihad ..."
Several US and Pakistani experts such as Georgetown University's Christine Fair and Hudson Institute's Hussain Haqqani have called out Islamabad's bluff, including its serial hoodwinking of Washington.
In a rude reminder of Pakistan's long history of sheltering terrorists, Bloomberg New Service this week ran a lengthy story about the country hiding Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian fugitive accused in the Mumbai serial bomb attack in 1993, under the headline "Pakistan's Secret Guest: Why Neighbors Doubt Terrorism Fight."
But all this has made no impression on the Congress or the state department that continues to dole out American tax-payer money to Pakistan without it stamping out ALL its terrorist groups. Many scholars are now warning that the Pakistan is losing an opportunity to squarely tackle terrorism by acting selectively against terrorists from K-P but not the terror groups based in the Punjab that the Pakistani establishment uses for its proxy war against India.
File photo of Pakistani soldiers during an operation in North Waziristan.
"It is highly unlikely that the quality of leadership has the intellectual or the historical vision to reverse the tide," the Pakistani columnist Raza Rumi wrote in a bleak commentary this week about the establishment's selective fight against terrorism, warning that until fight is more broad-based, the "Gojras, Meena Bazaars and Data Darbars will be bombed and children in Peshawar and elsewhere will remain vulnerable to ideologies of violence."
Neither the US Congress nor the administration appears particularly concerned or cognizant about it, going by the text of S.1847.
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