Pakistan's Radd-ul-Fasaad

By Yousaf Rafiq

One big reason we went down the wrong road is that nobody in power ever tolerated contrary opinion, even advice.

Radd-ul-Fasaad is, perhaps, the most logical follow up to the carnage of the last few days. Suicide attacks up and down the country, killing well over a hundred, have proved that we might have read a little too much into the success of Zarb-e-Azb. That does not mean, of course, that the operation was not successful. We are a far way from the nightmare years till 2014, when Gen Raheel finally put his foot down — even though the government, especially the teary eyed interior minister, still wanted talks — and formally launched the operation.

Since then not only was FATA cleared of the Taliban but attacks throughout the country came down considerably. And although there was no apparent link between the bombs and bullets targeting bad guys in the badlands and the Karachi operation, there was still considerable synergy. By then Karachi had become a known terrorist hub — some of al Qaeda and Taliban’s most senior commanders were found from there — and the operation clamped down on more than just target killings and extortion.

By the time Gen Raheel bowed out in November, there was a visible change in the environment. It was with good reason that the government claimed having broken the enemy’s back. Yet there was also mounting concern over foot-dragging on some very crucial elements of the National Action Plan (NAP), especially from the civilian side. A number of times the military reminded Islamabad of the centrality of progress on NAP, yet there was only more complacency. Resultantly, while the boots were able to consolidate the tribal area, the more qualitative parts of the Plan were not acted upon. The government could never build any sort of momentum on the matter of the madrassas, for example, and the front-line police force is still ridiculously under developed and incompetent to handle the war spilling over into urban centres.

Then there was the matter of the rot in Punjab. Everybody expected the operation to roll down into Punjab once the dirty work in FATA was taken care of. Yet there was very stiff resistance from the Punjab government itself. The military apparently argued that with pressure in FATA and Karachi, a Rangers squeeze against the enemy and its facilitators in Punjab would complete the ‘sandwich maneuver’, boxing in the enemy. Punjab’s PML-N government, on the other hand, insisted that not only was there no ‘rot’ in Punjab, but its own police and counter terror force was more than capable of handling its own problems. Of course, since the Punjab chief minister’s elder brother runs the federal government in the centre, no green light was coming from Islamabad.

Critics thinking that the army change of command perhaps created a small vacuum that the terrorists are now exploiting are also wrong for two broad reasons. One; military strategy, especially in times of war, never changes over night. There’s a very long chain of logistics that supports war efforts. And two; terrorist operations of the kind being carried out now also take months in the planning and then more months in the execution. Just gathering suicide blast equipment in one city, for example, is a very complicated and long-winged process. This so called Operation Ghazi, therefore, most likely got off the ground when there was a while for Gen Raheel to depart.

But since it has come to the fore now, and already we have a new operation being rolled out, not to mention that the Punjab operation is also now a reality, it is important to learn the right lessons from the last three years of war to ensure we will not need another operation a few more years down the road. First and foremost, the civilian government will have to play a far more responsible role than before. Nobody questions the Rangers’ ability to take the fight to the enemy as it combs through the province, but not many have been too impressed by the civilian government’s handling of some of the softer, yet far deeper, issues. One of the biggest problems with Punjab is lack of regulation on many of the madrassas. Once they are streamlined, the biggest problem — one that provides ideological as well as logistical habitat for extremists and militants — will be taken care of.

Another problem, which is observed far beyond Punjab, is lack of proper coordination among the many intelligence and security agencies that run most of this war. Hopefully both civilian and military leaders would have understood well by now how much they can improve their game by just this one step. It is for good reason that it was one of the central features of NAP. We will continue to ignore it at our own peril.

There is another thing, perhaps far more important than even the immediate war effort itself, that we must do now; and that is introspection. Pakistan is a unique case. Unlike other countries embroiled in heartless existential wars — Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc — Pakistan’s problems are largely of our own making. One big reason we went down the wrong road is that nobody in power ever tolerated contrary opinion, even advice.

Even now nobody is allowed to say ‘we told you so’ about that strategic depth smart idea. And the government has never explained why people protesting missing persons quickly become missing persons. In not tolerating plurality, we have only fanned the fires of xenophobia, especially religious exclusion that has grown so strongly among extremists. The government must now ensure that all strands of opinion are tolerated and all manner of diversity welcomed, otherwise it will never be rid of terrorists of ‘all hues and colours’. And best we’ll do is come up with another impressive operation in not too distant the future.