When the prime minister alights from his aircraft on his return from a two-week foreign yatra that took him to a heated-up Middle East and then to the snowy Davos, with a convenient comfort break in London, not very good news awaits him.
His country was attacked from a neighbouring land by a group of people who slaughtered 21 of his citizens in a brazen attack on a university in Charsadda. None of his people, save one or two, ventured out to face questions of why such atrocity was permitted to repeat itself after the APS massacre. Most ministers had found their own Davos and chose quiet over confrontation.
Yet, something will need to be done despite Parvez Khattak, the KP CM, having absorbed most punches in the immediate aftermath. Reportedly, the CM was on his way to a luxurious holiday in Scotland when the Charsadda news came in. He correctly chose to return and, in the face of increasing public inquisition, tried to answer the wrath without ever having fully invested in what – to him – was always a federal responsibility conveniently outsourced to the military. The National Action Plan was to him yet another stick to lash the federal government with. If this does not highlight the irony in Pakistan’s institutional failure to fight an existential war, what will?
The inability to enact most elements of NAP, save perhaps the three related to the military, remains the single biggest failure in Pakistan’s endeavour to eliminate terrorism. All the work done by the military in fighting terror, and the immense sacrifice that this nation has offered in blood, sweat, time and money, is in the danger of being washed out by an amateurish treatment of the life-and-death matter that NAP is for this nation.
Yet, the prime minister could not skip Davos, or an unscheduled week-long holiday in London, after the entire world had taken note of the unfortunate event and offered their sympathies to an absent prime minister.
What to do about this resurging menace of terror hitting at Pakistan’s softest and most painful spots? The PM has his work cut out. Finding succour with the military, as a default resort by the civilian governments, is unlikely to mitigate the threat. NAP essentially is the civilians’ field of play with most parts of responsibility falling under the minister of interior who seems to be again cut-up with his government, and hence vacated his responsibility for some time now under medical pretexts. The provinces, the PM’s next line of dependence for enacting related areas of NAP, are either simply inept or, again, conveniently jaded with his government in the centre; hence insufficiently invested. No single authority, thus, has a handle over whether NAP gets implemented at all.
This finds convenient holes for the terrorists to find cover in with their various abettors and facilitators. Despite repeated urgings to the general populace to report strangers and those that appear malfeasant, the people are neither committed nor seem to share stakes in a disturbing lack of societal conscience towards the looming dangers. There remains a sense of apathy as the threat finds renewed vigour, with a possibility that unless nipped right now the terrorists will likely gain impetus in yet another spate of prolonged danger to both the state and the society. Leaders – political, civil-society and religious – have precariously failed to embed this sense of collective responsibility towards war needing societal responses.
If this seems hard enough a place to be in, wait till the prime minister touches the rock that has since formed in Kabul. By the evening of the Charsadda attack Umar Mansoor’s organisation in Afghanistan had already circulated the pictures of the four terrorists taken with Mansoor somewhere in Afghanistan before they set course on their deadly mission. By the next morning, the entire attack had been restructured to establish its origin.
General Raheel Sharif spoke to the military and political leadership in Afghanistan, informing them of the roots of the attack and asking them to apprehend the perpetrators and stop the use of the Afghan soil against Pakistan. The next day President Ashraf Ghani went public denying that Afghanistan was the source of this attack. Plausible deniability not even a thought, plain denial was his chosen retort. This becomes an even bigger headache for an absent Nawaz Sharif.
There have to be three levels of remedial actions for Pakistan to pursue: internally to institute elements of NAP, and whatever in addition is deemed essential, that will help society and governments face up to this menace; dealing with the terror groups via a combination of border control – not management alone – and use of prudent force where possible to neutralise their potential to threaten Pakistan; and finally an honest and serious regional compact to eliminate the use of proxies between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan in pursuit of antiquated foreign policy goals – where their direct use may have subsided, encouraging them by looking the other way is equally injurious to regional peace and self-destructive in essence. The fire of terror, otherwise, will consume all if it is not entirely eliminated.
Nawaz Sharif’s difficulty though will be to find the right balance as he fights the imminent threat to his people and endeavours to improve the bilateral climate with Afghanistan to seek long-term regional peace. Especially so when groups attacking Pakistan are securely ensconced in Afghanistan, and when Ghani neatly denies their existence despite no control over those parts of his state where these groups are located. Nawaz, thus, must find inter-state harmony with Afghanistan even as he encourages internal stability there; his own predicament within Pakistan equally consuming in intensity and imperativeness.
This three-way challenge beckons his attention. May he return soon to take the helm and attend to what threatens his country’s stability. Default resort to military may not be the escape this time. Obama may just be right in predicting continued instability – unless Pakistan can sort itself out.
The writer is a retired air-vice marshal, former ambassador and a security and political analyst.
Email: shhzdchdhryyahoo.com