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print versionPakistan may be facing the most crucial moment of its existence. Its back is pushed to the wall, and it seems to have been left with no choice but to do what it should have done several years ago. It should have, on its own, abandoned the policy of using proxy warriors for ill-conceived security objectives, and reined in the religious warlords who have been repeatedly challenging the writ of the state.
Sadly, the realization has come not from how the jehadi organisations have lately turned against Pakistan and wreaked havoc in its cities and tribal areas. It has come from intense international pressures after the Mumbai carnage. Which means that had the external pressure not come, Pakistani policies would have continued to be prevailed upon by those who regarded, and perhaps continue to regard, these elements essential for the country’s security. Only very recently, a former chief of ISI (not Hameed Gul) was advocating on a popular TV channel that Pakistan should surreptitiously support and protect the Pakistani Taliban to defeat NATO forces and the increasing Indian presence in Afghanistan. He was also suggesting denying such a support in public.
Although the Pakistani leadership had been making statements against these terrorist outfits for a long time, not enough action was ever taken to eliminate them.
President Musharraf survived at least three direct terrorist attacks. The former Prime Minister Shoukat Aziz survived one direct attempt. Benazir Bhutto was not that fortunate.
Now most in the government are convinced that elimination of jehadis and terrorists has become an urgent need for Pakistan’s survival as a democratic country.
Whether this change in view would easily get translated into a final action against terrorists remains to be seen.
That India has taken the case of Mumbai terrorist attack to the United Nations Security Council, and succeeded in getting sanctions imposed on a few organisations and individuals, has in a way stunned the Pakistani establishment and analysts. They had been expecting, and bracing themselves, for some kind of punitive strike from India on terrorist targets, and a possible reaction from Pakistan. Policy analysts were speculating that such a strike would get an immediate military response from Pakistan, which could lead to heightened tensions, and perhaps a war. But they were comforting themselves that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan’s arsenal would deter India from undertaking an all- out war as it had in 2001-2.
But the Indian move to solidly array international opprobrium against jehadi outfits in South Asia — read Pakistan — will not necessarily make them heave a sigh of relief.
The United Nations has placed sanctions against the top leadership of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba ( also written as Taiba or Toiba), implying that Pakistan will be obliged to not only seal its offices and arrest the leadership but will also be required to freeze their assets. The UN has also required these actions against Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JD), which it has rightly pointed out as the front organization of the LeT. Pakistanis
Pakistanis should fear that if India brings out a convincing link between the Mumbai terrorists and the ISI, the world will now have no hesitation in placing sanctions on the ISI. That will come as a very bitter pill to the Pakistani establishment.
Recall that LeT as an organization actually stands banned in Pakistan for quite some time. You do not see its open presence anywhere in the country because it had re- formed itself into JD. Jamaat-ud Dawah wal Irshad was the original organisation based in Muridke near Lahore, out of the womb of which the LeT was born.
The leaders of LET/JD, including the chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, were arrested at the time of the ban, but were later released without any indictment.
Even before India moved the UN Security Council, Pakistan had started action against JD by arresting a few leaders, and locking up its offices. The reports of investigation into the Mumbai carnage were convincing enough to force the Pakistan government to do this. But Pakistan needs to ban JD as well as such other organisations as Jaish- e- Mohammad.
Thus the war against terrorism for Pakistan has now a very broad front. It is against the likes of LeT, JD, JM, etc., on the one hand, and against the Taliban styled militants in the tribal region at the Pak- Afghan border on the other. These militants had unleashed a barrage of suicide bombers against the Pakistani public in the last three to four years.
THEY are not letting the Pakistan Army take control of the region, inflicting heavy casualties on them, and extending their influence from the tribal areas into some settled districts.
The Pakistan Army is currently actively engaging them in Bajor Agency, but other areas that are relatively quiet are also far from being under the military or government control. The Taliban have established their writ in most areas in which no outsider can enter without their permission.
It is said that even the presence of the Pakistan Army units in those areas is not without permission from the local Taliban.
The old tribal power structure has been uprooted. Most maliks (tribal heads) have either been murdered or have fled the area. In their place is the rule of the local Taliban without any central leadership.
They are essentially local religious warlords inspired by the Afghan Taliban.
The local Taliban have established their theocratic rule in their respective areas of influence with unheard-of brutalities and barbarity. They seem to have full control of the Swat Valley, and are ready to take over Peshawar. The NATO supply trucks that had been plying since 2001 have suddenly come under attack right on the outskirts of Peshawar. Rumours are that Peshawar’s rich have started to move out with their valuables. It is not clear to the Pakistani public if the Pakistani establishment wishes to fight and root out the Taliban, or is keeping them for Afghanistan under the now- discredited security paradigm.
The two kinds of terrorists Pakistan now needs to fight are not necessarily disjointed.
They represent two heads of the same monster. Most people also accept that the monster is home-grown. It is immaterial that that these groups were initially nurtured by the United States in its war against the Soviet Union. What is important is that if Pakistan has to survive as a modern democratic state, Islamic militancy of all kinds has to be eliminated, and a writ of the state has to be established in all nooks and corners of the country.
Courtesy: The Mail Today, New Delhi, 13 Dec. 2008
