Pakistan finds itself entangled in a posh internet of safety dilemmas, with militant factions freely executing operations throughout the contentious terrains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Balochistan. Most of those assaults have been attributed to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Pakistan has been holding exterior forces, notably the Afghan Taliban, liable for these assaults. However, for a extra reasonable evaluation, Pakistan officers have to introspect and deal with the home points fueling this surge in violence.
More critically, it calls for of Islamabad an pressing recalibration of its regional diplomacy. Pakistan wants to maneuver away from utilizing ‘terrorism’ as an instrument of statecraft as it’s coming again to chunk the hand that has fed it for thus lengthy.
Over the final three weeks, Pakistan has been rocked by a wave of terror incidents, with 4 important assaults occurring in fast succession throughout KPK and Balochistan. On March 16, an assault orchestrated by militants from the Hafiz Gul Bahadur faction of TTP focused a navy outpost in North Waziristan’s Mir Ali space, claiming the lives of seven members of the Pakistan navy, amongst them a Lieutenant Colonel and a Captain. This act of violence ignited widespread condemnation and a clamour for retribution amongst Pakistanis, drawing vows of vengeance from the nation’s highest echelons, starting from the president to the prime minister and high navy officers.
President Asif Ali Zardari, whereas paying his respects on the funeral of Lt Col Syed Kashif Ali, acknowledged, “Pakistan would not hesitate to retaliate against any aggression, whether from across its borders or within its own lands.” In the midst of this fervent response, and simply as the Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) disclosed the neutralisation of the assault’s architects in a North Waziristan confrontation, Pakistan launched airstrikes on March 18 in opposition to militant strongholds in Afghanistan’s Paktika and Khost provinces, believed to be bastions of Hafiz Bahadur’s faction.
Subsequent to those occasions, Baloch nationalist insurgents struck on the closely guarded Gwadar Port Authority Complex, a facility below Chinese operation, on March 20. This assault was swiftly adopted by a extreme offensive in opposition to the Pakistan Naval Station (PNS) Siddique in Turbat, Balochistan. Additionally, on the identical day, a suicide bombing focused a convoy escorting Chinese engineers, culminating in the tragic demise of 5 Chinese people in the northwest area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The nature of those safety lapses factors to a diminishing management of the Pakistani navy over the nation’s safety framework, casting shadows over its functionality to plug these breaches successfully. Particularly telling is the assault on the Gwadar Port, which stands as a stark illustration of the perilous fallout from Pakistan’s long-standing use of ‘terror’ as a state instrument.
This is additional highlighted by the involvement of Hafiz Gul Bahadur’s faction in the Mir Ali incident. Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who as soon as served as a big navy collaborator with the Pakistan Army in North Waziristan, has now aligned with the Taliban, his faction now representing a formidable part of the TTP’s operational power.
Within the Taliban ranks, Gul Bahadur held a particular standing in the eyes of Pakistan’s navy elite, being deemed a ‘good’ Taliban—a time period attributed to militants who abstained from assaulting Pakistani forces, thereby being nurtured as strategic property to advance the nation’s regional ambitions. Originating from the scholar faction of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) and a veteran of the Afghan battle in the Nineteen Eighties, Gul Bahadur ascended inside the Taliban hierarchy throughout the early 2000s, a trajectory largely facilitated by his reciprocal alliance with the Pakistan Army. Notably, in 2006, he reached an accord with Pakistani officers, consenting to eject overseas militants from North Waziristan, however the continued navy offensive in opposition to the broader TTP community.
In return for his cooperation, the Pakistani state provided Gul Bahadur unparalleled autonomy inside his territory, permitting him to type a “Shura council” to manage the realm, together with the imposition of taxes and fines. This maneuver not solely elevated Bahadur as the main Taliban determine in North Waziristan but it surely was additionally designed to drive a rift inside the wider militant framework of the TTP.
Pakistan was conscious of the inherent risks of aligning with extremist components from the beginning. This uneasy alliance in the end backfired, as the very militants nurtured by Pakistan started to show their weapons on the state itself, resulting in a dramatic escalation in violence that resulted in the deaths of 1000’s of civilians and navy personnel.
Consequently, when Pakistan initiated Operation Zarb-e-Azb in 2014, focusing on the TTP, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and his faction have been compelled to hunt refuge throughout the Durand Line in Afghanistan, below the auspices of the Afghan Taliban—a bunch that, in a coincidence, relied on the logistical help of the Pakistan Army.
Ignoring the clear drawbacks of fostering terrorism, Pakistan ignored the important classes stemming from its affiliation with terror factions. Instead, it performed an important function in aiding the Afghan Taliban’s overthrow of the Afghan Republic, culminating in their seize of Kabul in August 2021. Key figures inside Pakistan’s navy command, together with the then-chief of its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, lauded this calamitous manoeuvre as a testomony to Islamabad’s overseas coverage triumphs. This transfer was celebrated as a strategic victory presupposed to safe Pakistan’s tumultuous frontier with Afghanistan and place it advantageously in opposition to India.
Pakistan’s encounter with the repercussions of its personal methods was not a matter of ‘if’ however reasonably ‘when’. The nation has a protracted historical past of leveraging terrorism and terrorist organisations as tactical instruments inside its regional technique, a follow relationship again to the Nineteen Eighties with its help for the anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahideen, and persevering with with its proxy warfare in Jammu and Kashmir in opposition to India. The Afghan Taliban, having been pushed by the Pakistan Army for greater than 20 years as a proxy in opposition to the Afghan administration, is well-versed in the tactical employment of proxies in its dealings with Islamabad. This actuality is especially poignant as the group grapples with governance woes, additional aggravated by the worldwide neighborhood’s refusal to recognise its regime, thus isolating it and exacerbating its financial plight.
The intensifying unrest and diminishing authority over these rogue terror factions should immediate a second of profound introspection inside Pakistan. For the nation to genuinely recuperate from its prevailing financial woes and safety decline, it’s essential that the Pakistani administration definitively forsakes this ruinous strategy, categorically renouncing the engagement with terror organisations to realize its regional ambitions. Such a coverage has not solely wreaked havoc on Pakistan itself however has additionally inflicted lasting injury on Afghanistan and perpetuated instability in Kashmir for generations.
Increasingly, voices inside Pakistan argue that the nation can not afford to let a phase of its navy management drive the nation down a path of no return for its personal profit. Now is the second for the Pakistani civilian authorities to wrest management of regional overseas coverage from the navy’s grasp and to chart a course in the direction of a cooperative regional stance. This shift would contain a strict prohibition on the usage of Pakistani territory by any terrorist group as a launchpad for assaults on neighbouring nations.
The authorities should place a premium on peace as the cornerstone of Pakistan’s financial revival, which is important for offering its impoverished inhabitants with fundamental requirements and alternatives for financial well-being. Otherwise, Pakistan is doomed to proceed down a path of smash.
The author is an creator and columnist and has written a number of books. His X deal with is @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are private and solely that of the creator. They don’t essentially mirror News18’s views.
