Why Pakistan is under siege on four fronts
Pakistan is under siege on four fronts. First, the terrorists it has for decades bred to attack India are coming home to roost. Over the past 10 days assorted jihadi groups have struck Pakistan as many as eight times.
Second, the Islamic State (ISIS), which claimed responsibility for the devastating attack on the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Sufi shrine in Sindh, now poses a real threat to Pakistan.
Third, the Trump White House has emitted mixed signals on its future Af-Pak strategy. The state department announced last week that it would support Pakistan’s “fight against terrorism”, parroting the post-9/11 Bush-Obama line that treats Islamabad as a victim of terror rather that a perpetrator. The bad news for Islamabad though is that the White House is set to favour a much tougher line overall on Pakistan, stopping short of designating it as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The fourth and most worrying problem for Islamabad is the near-complete breakdown in its fraught relationship with Afghanistan. Following the ISIS terror attack on the Sufi shrine, which Pakistan blames on ISIS safe havens in Afghanistan, the Pakistan army for the first time launched strikes on militant bases on Afghan soil last Friday (February 17). The strikes are continuing with heavy artillery and mortar being deployed.
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| A man mourns the death of a relative killed in the suicide blast at the tomb of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar on February 17. (Credit: Reuters photo) |
According to reports from Islamabad, “Four camps of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar terror group were targeted in the strikes across the border of Pakistan’s Khyber and Mohmand tribal agencies. An official said the security forces used heavy weapons and mortar shells to hit several training centres of Omar Khalid Khorasani, the head of the Jamaat-ul Ahrar group. People living near Landikotal in Khyber Agency were asked to vacate their houses to avoid collateral damage. Some reports (since disputed) said that several militants, including the deputy commander of Jamaat-ul Ahrar, Adil Bacha, were killed in the strikes.”
Pakistan is now beset by terror groups on all sides. The recent attack on senior police personnel in the centre of Lahore killed over a dozen people. The strike on the Sufi shrine was even deadlier, killing 88 people. Other terror attacks in the past 10 days have been carried out by jihadi groups which are affiliates of ISIS, Tehreek-e-Taliban, the Afghan Taliban and several breakaway terrorist factions.
Pakistan which since 1989 had converted itself into a factory exporting terror has created an enabling and self-perpetuating ecosystem of terrorism. If you want to learn how to wage jihad, Pakistan is your university of choice.
The irony of the Pakistan army’s strike on terror safe havens in Afghanistan cannot have been lost on Islamabad. For years it has given sanctuary, arms, money and training to jihadi groups attacking Afghanistan. Its objective: browbeat Afghanistan into being its vassal state to give Islamabad strategic depth in its proxy terror war against India.
The tables have turned. Afghanistan is now giving sanctuary to terror groups attacking Pakistan. Islamabad has accused Kabul of doing exactly what it has done to Afghanistan and India for decades: providing safe havens to terrorists.
After the terror attack on the Sufi shrine in Sindh, Pakistan’s army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa said terrorist safe havens in Afghanistan were “testing our current policy of cross-border restraint.”
The words could have been taken straight out of Indian army chief General Bipin Rawat’s mouth.
Pak policy reset
With Islamabad under pressure from multiple sources — Kabul, Washington and a mélange of terror groups — India has the opportunity to reset its Pakistan policy. National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval’s recent under-the-radar meeting with the Russian leadership in Moscow got India included in the regional peace conference on Afghanistan hosted by Russia last week.
In an insightful piece in Forbes on February 17, 2017, Anders Corr wrote: “Russia barred the US from the Afghanistan peace conference held in Moscow on Wednesday (February 17), much to the consternation of Afghanistan. The peace conference was surrounded with public recriminations. Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran are on one side, and Afghanistan and India are on the other. Pakistan, Iran, and Russia have supported the Taliban. China had direct talks with the Taliban last year, and its military vehicles have recently been spotted in Afghanistan. Russia says support of the Taliban will counter the Islamic State, which is the more dangerous foe. But such support will really just weaken the current elected government of Afghanistan.
“The citizens of Afghanistan will (then) lose their relatively secular government in exchange for more violence, the old fundamentalist Islamic government of the Taliban, or both. It will also be a very public failure of the US and NATO. The Taliban are known for their opium trade, harsh laws against women, and blowing up of massive ancient Buddhist statues during their rule from 1996 to 2001. It is unfortunate that Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan prefer to side with the Taliban, rather than support the elected Afghan government.”
It was Russia (then the Soviet Union) that laid the foundation for militancy in Afghanistan by invading the country in 1979. It withdrew in 1989, beaten by CIA-trained Afghan militants who later formed the nucleus of the Taliban in the early 1990s under the watchful gaze of prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Afghanistan has been benighted ever since.
The Russia-China-Iran-Pakistan convergence of mala fide interests in Afghanistan can be countered only if the US, NATO, India and Afghanistan form a counter strategy. Once ISIS is evicted from Syria and Iraq, it will move lock, stock and barrel into Pakistan which, like a magnet, attracts jihadis of all stripes.
Pakistan propagates the fiction, with the help of China (and increasingly Russia and Iran), that the Taliban is an antidote to ISIS and should therefore be part of the Afghan government. Because of their rivalry with the US and NATO, Russia, China and Iran swallow this fiction.
Indian foreign policy faces its sternest test in Af-Pak. It must not blink. Nor should the US. And, most of all, nor should the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani.