Pakistan has lost the plot fighting terrorism

The terrorist attack last Friday (September 18) on Pakistan’s Badaber Air Force base near Peshawar reflects the inability of Pakistan’s military intelligence establishment to end the blowback from its past policy of using jihadis against neighboring countries as strategic assets.

Twenty-nine people were killed in the attack, the deadliest against the Pakistani military since the Pakistan Army enhanced its operations against the Tehrike-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) after the December 2014 massacre of 130 students of Army Public School in Peshawar by the Taliban. Subsequently, Pakistan’s leaders announced that they would target terrorists indiscriminately to make the country safe from similar attacks.

The military launched Operation "Zarb-e-Azb" in June 2014 after attempts at dialogue between the Pakistani state and the TTP failed. By November 2014, the military claimed to have cleared approximately 90 per cent of the tribal territory of North Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan, of terrorist safe havens. The army was said to have decimated many terrorist groups, including the Afghan Haqqani network and the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

In June 2015, Army spokesperson Major General Asim Bajwa provided the media with details of the operation which included the destruction of 837 hideouts of militants and recovery of 253 tons of explosives. According to the director general of the ISPR (Inter Services Public Relations), 9000 intelligence based operations were carried out, in which thousands of terrorists were apprehended and hundreds were killed.

For a few months after the launch of Zarb-e-Azb, there was a welcome decline in attacks at religious places including those of religious minorities. Washington also appreciated Pakistan’s efforts and its role in combating terrorism. The US State department’s annual report for 2014 acknowledged that Pakistan topped the list of countries where there had been a decline in terror attacks.

The US report acknowledged the role of Pakistan’s army in fighting against terrorists’ networks including banned outfits that were involved in sectarian attacks. Even Kabul acknowledged and praised Pakistan’s efforts in going after terrorist groups and ties between the two countries improved resulting in closer intelligence cooperation.

After such a promising start, things appear to have become worse in the last few months. There has been a breakdown in peace talks with the Taliban, a rise in terror attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Kabul and Washington are once again critical of Pakistan’s actions and there is increased domestic instability within the country.

Pakistan was the key actor in the peace talks between the Afghan National Unity government and the Afghan Taliban which were also attended by representatives from the United States and China. These talks were moving ahead when the news of the 2013 death of Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, came out. This led to a breakdown in the talks as Kabul believed Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban had kept the news of Omar’s death a secret for over two years, pointing to Pakistan’s untrustworthiness.

Kabul suspects that the reason for keeping Omar’s death a secret for two years was to ensure that Pakistan’s favorite Mullah Akhtar Mansoor had time to consolidate his base as the new leader of the Afghan Taliban. The infighting in the Taliban and the succession struggle has also led to a reversal to the warlord culture of the 1980s in Afghanistan.

What has further contributed to friction between Kabul and Islamabad is the rise in the number of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan with the New York Times reporting that over 4100 Afghan soldiers have been killed and 7800 wounded in the first six months of 2015.

The rise in attacks within Afghanistan has led to a change in the attitude of Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani who since taking over power was extremely keen to build a new relationship with Pakistan.

After the December 2014 attack on school children, Ghani helped capture and hand over to Pakistan the terrorists who were involved in the attack. He also played down Afghanistan’s ties with India and improved those with Pakistan.

However, with the rise in terror attacks within Afghanistan and the news of Mullah Omar's death remaining a secret for two years, Ghani has become increasingly critical of Pakistan and reverted to the old policy of blaming Pakistan for attacks within Afghanistan.

After a year or more of praising Pakistani efforts at combating terrorism, Washington has once again started to assert that Pakistan needs to do more against terrorists. In August 2015, US National Security Advisor Susan Rice visited Islamabad to demand that Pakistan act against the Haqqani network that has been involved in attacks on American troops and targets in Afghanistan.

Kabul and Washington DC both asserting that Islamabad is not doing enough is problematic as it reopens discussion over whether Pakistan is committed to fighting all terrorists or is still picking and choosing terrorists it wants to nurture while fighting others.

At the same time there has also been a rise in attacks within Pakistan. In May 2015, a bus carrying Ismailis, a religious minority in Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi, was attacked and 43 people were killed. In Baluchistan two buses were attacked and 21 passengers killed whereas in Lahore, the capital of Punjab, a suicide bomber killed himself near a stadium where an international cricket match between Pakistan and Zimbabwe was being played.

One is left wondering why, after appearing successful in fighting the terrorists, especially in North Waziristan, Pakistan is back to being both a target of terrorists as well as a country perceived as harbouring terrorists?

The answer might lie in the fact that instead of focusing on the jihadi terror groups who attack the very soul of Pakistan and are a threat to everyone, Pakistan’s military got distracted in reopening previous hostilities against secular political parties viewed as enemies by Pakistan’s generals.

Having decided to fight the jihadis, the army should have mended its fences with secular parties it had antagonised in years when it directly interfered in Pakistan’s politics. Secular politicians should have been viewed as the military’s allies in the fight against the jihadis but the army still continues to view them as a threat, possibly because most Pakistani secularists seek better ties with India and the United States than the military’s orthodoxy deems patriotic.

Pakistan’s secular forces are already threatened on various fronts: by the Taliban, sectarian militias and other allied Islamist groups.

According to news reports, even after being formally banned, terrorist groups like Jamaat-ud-Dawah and Lashkar-e-Taiba, sectarian groups like Ahle Sunnat-wal-Jamaat and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the various Taliban networks continue to operate freely within the country.

What is even more worrying is the growing reports of how the Islamic State – ISIS – has emerged as another challenge for Pakistani security forces.

Pakistan faces an immediate threat from jihadi groups and their allies and the first priority of the state should be to take action against these organisations. Instead of targeting only the ideologues of islamist extremism and those that fund them, the Pakistani military continues to squander its energies in persecuting political parties that have criticised the military for its policies in the past.

The fact that the attackers of the Badaber base were able to obtain military uniforms and fake Pakistan Air Force identity cards and at least five of the 14 were Pakistanis reflects the emergency facing Pakistan.

Pakistan faces an existential threat from various terror groups and ideologies. In this endeavour, the Pakistani state would benefit by seeking support from secular political allies instead of targeting them for political reasons.