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How Pakistani Taliban is Rawalpindi’s own Frankenstein – Firstpost

How Pakistani Taliban is Rawalpindi’s own Frankenstein – Firstpost



The use of terror to achieve foreign policy and security objectives against its immediate neighbours, India and Afghanistan, is a part of Pakistan’s strategic doctrine. It has been willing to pay any price but has been unwilling to abandon nurturing terrorist groups to be used in a calibrated manner in India and Afghanistan. This is so even when some of the supported groups turned against it and have extracted a heavy toll on its security forces.

In his media conference of December 27, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Director-General, Inter Services Press Relations (DG ISPR), revealed that in the current year, 383 officers and soldiers of Pakistani security forces had lost their lives in counter-terrorism operations. He admitted this number even while boasting that Pakistani security forces had killed 925 terrorists and TTP members this year, and he stressed that this was the highest number of terrorists killed in the last five years.

Incidentally, since July this year, Pakistan no longer refers to the TTP as such but as Fitna al-Khawarij. It is doing so to indicate that they do not represent Islam; the word Khawarij is drawn from Islamic history and seeks to evoke negative sentiments for the TTP by emphasising that they have turned their back on Islam. It is ironic that the term Fitna al-Khawarij applies equally to pro-Pakistan state terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Hizb-e-Mujahideen, for these groups indulge in wanton killings of innocent persons.

No genuine Islamic scholar terms the activities of these groups as sanctioned by the faith. As for the Afghan Taliban, the use of the term Fitna al-Khawarij for the TTP has made no material difference in their support for the TTP. Nor, for that matter, has the attraction of the TTP waned in the Pushtoon areas of Pakistan just because the Pakistani authorities do not call them the TTP anymore.

DG ISPR was vitriolic in criticising the Afghan authorities for not controlling the TTP. He gave an account of all that Pakistan had done for Afghanistan, which is, according to him, a brotherly Islamic neighbour. He charged that Pakistan was clear that it would not allow its citizens or its security forces to be killed by the TTP, which had sanctuaries in Afghanistan. While TTP attacks on Pakistan security forces have been ongoing through the year, there has been a relative spurt in November and December. In the early hours of December 21, the TTP attacked a Pakistani security post in South Waziristan, killing 16 Pakistani soldiers and wounding 8. Pakistan responded by sending a delegation to warn Kabul, and even while it was meeting with Afghan Taliban ministers, the Pakistan Air Force attacked what it claimed were TTP targets. Kabul announced that 46 persons, including women and children, were killed in the Pakistani attack. It vowed to respond.

While Pakistan now accuses the Afghan Taliban of giving sanctuaries to the TTP, it does not reflect on the fact that it had itself given the Afghan Taliban sanctuaries and full support, which enabled them to outlast the US and its allies in the ‘forever war’. Now, it is strange that Pakistani strategists do not realise that the Afghan Taliban would hardly be deterred by its aerial attacks because they had withstood those of the US.

Perhaps, Pakistan feels that it has a hold on some of the Afghan Taliban leadership because of their investments and homes in Pakistani cities. This is truly a mirage because the Afghan Taliban leadership has got ‘integrated’ within parts of Pakistani society to an extent that its investments are safe. Pakistan is also moving Afghan refugees back to their country. DG ISPR confirmed that 8.25 lakh refugees have been sent across the Durand Line in the past 15 months.

Pakistan’s economy has somewhat stabilised in the latter part of the current year. It has secured the 24th IMF loan, but what the economy needs is radical changes, which can only be possible with structural socio-economic transformation. There is no appetite in the Pakistani elites for this. Hence, what is underway is essentially a holding economic operation. This will not make any enduring positive changes because the impoverished, especially the youth, will be attracted to extremist Islamic mazhabs that extol the virtue of jihad. And some of these ‘jihadists’ such as the TTP, have turned with a vengeance on the army. And it is doubtful if the TTP’s fellow travellers in Afghanistan will be willing to abandon them.

Why is it that Pakistan is willing to pay a great price and yet not give up on the terrorist tanzims? Some Pakistani senior retired army officers say that it is impossible for the army to just march on the headquarters of these tanzims, raze them to the ground, and arrest their leaders. The roots of the tanzims are now deep in sections of Pakistani society. While there is no doubt that the Pakistani security forces and their political class will have to pay a great price in seeking to reduce the influence of the tanzims, the fact is that they do not wish to do so because they continue to be instruments of their state policy. This is notwithstanding that those tanzims, such as the TTP, have over the years not even spared children. This 16th of December marked not only the 53rd anniversary of the fall of Dhaka but also the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in 2014, which led to more than 140 deaths. That had led to widespread grief not only in Pakistan but many school children in India had held vigils in solidarity with those killed in the school attack.

At his media conference, DG ISPR referred to India in negative terms. This was not surprising. He said that India was engaging in numerous minor transgressions on the Line of Control. He repeated the standard and stale narrative of Indian atrocities in Kashmir and repeated the predictable demand for the implementation of their right of self-determination. He went on to accuse India of following anti-minority, especially anti-Muslim, policies. He called on the global community to take note of what was happening in India. The fact is that Pakistan’s security issues are arising on its western borders and relate to its relations with Afghanistan. Yet, in his opening remarks, DG ISPR could not resist referring to India. It is this obsession that makes it willing to pay any price on terrorism. That brings this writer to record that this obsession has been there for a long time. He experienced it as the successive paragraphs show.

While the India-Pakistan composite dialogue was being worked out between the diplomats of the two countries in 1997-98, a meeting occurred between the two sides in Colombo in July 1998, on the margins of the SAARC summit. From the beginning of negotiating this complex dialogue process, it was obvious to Indian diplomats that Pakistan’s basic interest was not in developing a comprehensive relationship that would enable predictable engagement on humanitarian concerns, promote cooperation, and also address contentious issues but to highlight the Jammu and Kashmir situation from their perspective. The negotiations had been ongoing for over a year, and Pakistan’s obsessive obduracy on J&K at the cost of fostering a full relationship was leading to a degree of exasperation in the Indian negotiators, especially because the Pakistani propaganda machine was projecting the Indian side as obstructionist and not wanting to move the relationship forward.

At the conclusion of these talks, Indian senior diplomats, while officially briefing the media, said that not only individuals but nations too can suffer from neurosis, and Pakistan was neurotic when it came to the J&K issue. Pakistan knew that there was no way it could wrest the then-state from Indian control, but its compulsive obsessions compelled it to hold the welfare of its people, which was strongly linked to normalising ties with India, to ransom. That neurosis continues, and it has crippled Pakistan.

The writer is a former Indian diplomat who served as India’s Ambassador to Afghanistan and Myanmar, and as secretary, the Ministry of External Affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.



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